frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Feb 11, 2020 22:56:39 GMT -5
I think I watched a trailer before some movie last year and promptly forgot about it. But then I watched it again yesterday and it looks really damn interesting. Made no sense and I have no idea what the story is about, so, successful trailer!
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Post by BeefEaster on Feb 12, 2020 13:09:19 GMT -5
Yeah, I watched it about a week ago. Went in with no knowledge of the film whatsoever. At first I thought it was going to be some lighthearted comedy. About 3 quarters of the way through I began realizing I was very mistaken.
Great movie.
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Post by okcomputer on Feb 12, 2020 16:39:43 GMT -5
I think I watched a trailer before some movie last year and promptly forgot about it. But then I watched it again yesterday and it looks really damn interesting. Made no sense and I have no idea what the story is about, so, successful trailer! One of the best things about it is even 30-45 minutes into the movie you're still not quite sure what it's about, it's just little pieces of story setting up the plot. But once the story threads start moving together and the plot kicks in, it lands with a gut punch more successful than anything I've seen since Get Out.
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Post by S. Griffin on Feb 12, 2020 17:01:33 GMT -5
Mrs. Griffin and I finally watched Venom. That shit was hilarious. I don't think it was supposed to be. It reminded me of the super hero movies from the 2003-2007 era like Daredevil, Catwoman, Elektra, and Ghost Rider. Tom Hardy was fucking great, though, and without him, this movie would have been completely unwatchable. 5/10
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Feb 13, 2020 23:25:15 GMT -5
I keep putting off pickup up Venom because I just don't expect I'll like it. I'm just gonna have to wait for it to hit cable.
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Post by BeefEaster on Feb 13, 2020 23:33:30 GMT -5
It would have ben so much better if they let them have an R rating.
The movie is already pretty cheesy as it is but them having to cut away or have no blood whatsoever every time venom kills someone put it in to bad cheesy territory when it could have been good cheesy with some good blood and gore scenes.
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Post by S. Griffin on Feb 14, 2020 9:58:22 GMT -5
I keep putting off pickup up Venom because I just don't expect I'll like it. I'm just gonna have to wait for it to hit cable. It is on Cable. We recorded it off of HBO or Cinemax (can't remember) several months ago. And it IS NOT likeable. DO NOT buy it.
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Feb 15, 2020 13:39:22 GMT -5
^ I mean, like a Tuesday after work, flipping the channels of basic cable and finding it close to the beginning cable. TBS or USA kind of shit.
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Post by S. Griffin on Feb 15, 2020 15:12:29 GMT -5
That'll happen soon, I'm sure. FX acquired cable broadcast rights last year, along with Into the Spiderverse.
But Into the Spiderverse is 10,000 times better than Venom.
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Post by okcomputer on Feb 15, 2020 20:03:22 GMT -5
I haven’t seen Venom yet (looks like some reject from 2005, complete with Eminem track) but Spider-Verse is the best Spidey movie ever made.
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Post by S. Griffin on Feb 15, 2020 21:50:35 GMT -5
I haven’t seen Venom yet (looks like some reject from 2005, complete with Eminem track) but Spider-Verse is the best Spidey movie ever made. Not a fan of that "yet." Don't watch Venom. Remember when I warned you about Aquaman?
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Post by okcomputer on Feb 16, 2020 20:00:48 GMT -5
I made it about 30 minutes into Aquaman before turning it off. I’m in no hurry to ever watch Venom, even if they are trying to retcon it some backdoor MCU status.
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Post by frinspar on Feb 18, 2020 18:51:00 GMT -5
Just thinking about Aquaman makes me wish I had been shot that night instead, spent that time in the hospital.
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 4, 2020 23:39:03 GMT -5
Finally saw Knives Out. Absolutely lived up to the hype and did not help me not have a crush on Ana de Armas. I did not know what to expect, and it was difficult to anticipate where the movie was going, and I really enjoyed that. JJ Abrams has his "puzzle boxes" or some shit, and Rian Johnson has good film making and subverts expectations. The cast was excellent, and it was the first thing I actually liked Daniel Craig in since Layer Cake. I mean, I REALLY liked him and was surprised. I really want WB to cast him as John Constantine, but that will never happen. Loved this movie. 9/10
We also finally saw Jojo Rabbit. As a Jewish man married to a German woman, I felt like we needed to see this, and I was not disappointed. Excellent movie. Darker than I had anticipated, and I'm good with that. There was one thing I had an issue with at the end, which clashed with things that my grandfather (fought for us) told me and my wife's grandfather (fought for them and was VERY happy to be quickly captured by the Americans) also told her, but I won't spoil it. The kids were excellent as were Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johannson. Taika Waititi was, too. Stephen Merchant was more serious than I had anticipated, and his role probably could have been played by anybody, to be honest. Rebel Wilson was amusing. I also liked that it was under two hours. 8/10. Comparing the two, given the chance, which is kind of difficult, because they are very different, I have to say that in Knives Out it is pretty obvious that most of the characters are terrible people, while in JoJo Rabbit, the characters (a higher percentage of them, anyway) have more layers. Not that the characters in Knives Out needed layers. Just a comparison, like I said.
Doctor Sleep. Probably one of the better Stephen King adaptations, but it does work better as a sequel to the movie version of The Shining than an adaptation of Stephen King's book Doctor Sleep, which I really loved. I have an issue with several of the choices the filmmakers made and none of them had to do with tying one movie to the other. No. Scratch that. One thing, had they done what I thought they were going to do (since Abra is black, her mom DOES NOT have to be white) might have actually tied the two movies together even better had they done the book thing, but they only went part of the way for some odd reason. Ewan McGregor was better than I thought he'd be, but I can still think of some other actors who probably would have been better. Rebecca Ferguson was OUTSTANDING. Best villain in a Stephen King movie...ever, I think. 7/10
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frinspar
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Post by frinspar on Apr 5, 2020 11:27:21 GMT -5
^ I'd like to see all of those. Had Doctor Sleep on my phone to read for a long time and haven't gotten too far.
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 5, 2020 15:30:25 GMT -5
My advice about Doctor Sleep is to either read it (it's a great read) or watch the movie (great sequel to Kubrick's movie), but don't do both.
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Post by okcomputer on Apr 7, 2020 2:08:50 GMT -5
I really loved Doctor Sleep. I never read the book so I went in blind, and completely loved it. All the nods to The Shining were handled really well, servicing the story and fans of Kubrick’s movie at the same time. Pretty impressive juggling act there.
And Rebecca Ferguson... my god, she is spectacular. She needs to be in more stuff because WOW.
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Post by okcomputer on Apr 7, 2020 12:03:54 GMT -5
Finally saw Knives Out. Absolutely lived up to the hype and did not help me not have a crush on Ana de Armas. I did not know what to expect, and it was difficult to anticipate where the movie was going, and I really enjoyed that. JJ Abrams has his "puzzle boxes" or some shit, and Rian Johnson has good film making and subverts expectations. The cast was excellent, and it was the first thing I actually liked Daniel Craig in since Layer Cake. I mean, I REALLY liked him and was surprised. I really want WB to cast him as John Constantine, but that will never happen. Loved this movie. 9/10 I still haven’t seen Knives Out (hey, another one for this week!), but if you dug Daniel Craig in it you should definitely check out Logan Lucky if you haven’t already. It’s Soderbergh doing a redneck version of Ocean’s 11, and Craig is having a ridiculous amount of fun playing an explosives obsessive named Joe Bang. Adam Driver is great in it too. Go watch it.
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 7, 2020 13:36:05 GMT -5
I saw Logan Lucky. He was fine. I'm typically unimpressed by Daniel Craig in movies.
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 20, 2020 10:27:02 GMT -5
Watched Joker last night. I didn't think it was bad, but I was thoroughly unimpressed. Throughout most of the film, I was wondering if WB told Todd Phillips, "We couldn't get Scorsese, so make it like a Scorsese movie," or if he just has no dramatic vision of his own (all his other movies are comedies, and they're pretty terrible) and decided to ape Scorsese's style on his own accord. There's an overabundance of genre tropes in this movie (at least one of which was clearly a note from the studio), and I genuinely think this could have been a better movie had Phillips made just a few different, but significant and even subtle choices. The last twenty minutes were the most interesting twenty minutes of the whole film, and I get that a movie may want to do that (it's called the "climax), but I just didn't find the first 90 or so minutes particularly engaging. Joaquin Phoenix was, unsurprisingly, very good in this. 6/10
Movies people should watch instead: Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, Mean Streets, Shutter Island.
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Post by frinspar on Apr 21, 2020 13:38:15 GMT -5
^ Just from the previews Joker looked like a pretty blatant remake/mash-up of King of Comedy and Taxi Driver. And that might've even been what the editors were told to go for when putting ads together. If so, they delivered.
Watched Green Book last week. Didn't know it got as many awards as it did. I liked it a lot and it made me feel really good, but it didn't really transcend much beyond "buddy cop" territory for me. 8/10
Put on They Live the other afternoon. Always entertaining.
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 21, 2020 16:26:15 GMT -5
^ Just from the previews Joker looked like a pretty blatant remake/mash-up of King of Comedy and Taxi Driver. And that might've even been what the editors were told to go for when putting ads together. If so, they delivered. It's more than that. It's more complicated than just a mash up of those two better movies, and it's also not as smart as that. It also rips off Mean Streets and Shutter Island. It incorporates a shitload lot of genre tropes, too (ones that Scorsese is generally smart enough to stay away from and a couple that I think he invented). It also takes a few things from The Dark Knight Returns, as well as some events from the last fifty or so years of New York City's history, and it puts them together to make what is essentially a new thing, or at least a lot of familiar (some too familiar) things put together in a new way. Yet it remains wholly unoriginal, and also generally underwhelming for most of its running time. I also left out that it's pretty cringey at times, but not the quite right kind of uncomfortable for the type of movie Phillips wants it to be, but more like the type of cringey you would expect from the asshole who made the Hangover movies. There's also something that I won't spoil, but I will say that as someone who extensively studied abnormal psychology, psychopathology, physiological psychology, neurology, and neuropathology that just would not fucking happen the way Phillips wrote it.
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Post by solominicknight on Apr 21, 2020 21:00:01 GMT -5
Watched Joker once in theatre. I was bored enough I went to the lobby and played games on my phone for a bit. Girlfriend loved it though. She works with special needs and kids with learning disabilities so she thought it highlighted mental health issues and brought it forwards for discussion.
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Post by okcomputer on Apr 27, 2020 10:21:02 GMT -5
I was quarantined all last week, so I watched a whole bunch of stuff. Some I'd seen before, some for the first time. But I'm gonna write up quick reviews for all of em since I'm back at work and bored before things get insane this afternoon.
Knives Out - 9/10
Just a delight. Extremely fun, insanely funny, great cast without a single weak link among them, and a whodunit plot that's still a blast even after you think you have it figured out. Rian Johnson is amazing, and studios should give him carte blanche to write and direct whatever he wants (ESPECIALLY more Star Wars movies).
The Rise of Skywalker - 7/10
Is it perfect? Not even close. Is it a fitting ending to the sequel trilogy? I mean... sort of, mostly? Is it a fitting ending to the entire saga? YES. They were clearly kneecapped by the loss of Carrie Fisher so some of the movie's emotional beats don't quite land because you can clearly see what they wanted to have been able to do but were sadly unable, but it's successful enough to get the job done. It has way too many false alarms that get resolved 10 minutes later, and the whole story is pretty clearly JJ's ideas for episodes 8 & 9 combined into a single movie (which would bother me more if The Last Jedi weren't such a complete masterpiece), but at the end of the day it's a fun Star Wars movie and I love Star Wars movies, even the ones with some major flaws.
Uncut Gems - 9/10
Here's a sentence I never thought I'd say: Adam Sandler deserved an Oscar (at least a nomination) for this movie. He is just insanely good. The movie is like a 120 minute long anxiety attack, but in a fun way. It's completely bonkers and super stressed, sort of like what I'd imagine cocaine is like.
Evil Dead (2013) - 8/10
I hadn't watched this one since it came out, and it's so damn good. Better than the original. Not as good as Evil Dead 2, but better than the first one. I dig this kind of relentless, grimy, and gross horror. Practical effects all the way (with maybe some really subtle CGI work splattered around). Horrible characters you hate from the jump, so when the blood starts flowing you can enjoy the squishy results since these assholes totally had it coming. And the idea of a demonic possession story couched in a plot about heroin withdrawal is pure genius.
The Godfather Part III - 6/10
The first two Godfather movies are pure perfection, the best American movies ever made, period, full stop. The third one is... the third one. It's not terrible but not great either, but I still watch it once every few years. I think it works best when watched on its own, separate from the first two. Any movie suffers in comparison to Godfather 1 & 2, but when a movie is a direct sequel to those movies its failures stick out like the oranges every time someone is about to get killed. The pacing is all wrong, with a story that moves at a breakneck pace until the final act when things slow waaaaaay down, resulting in a disorienting finish. Coppola always says it's not really a Part III but an epilogue, which feels like his way of explaining away a movie he knows doesn't quite work. Also his daughter is a terrible actress. He should've waited for Winona Ryder.
Lawrence of Arabia - 10/10
I've been meaning to see this for years, and all it took was a global pandemic and a weeklong quarantine to get me to finally commit to all 228 minutes. And holy shit I don't know why I waited this long, because it's every bit the masterpiece its reputation suggests. There are shots and transitions that are legitimately mind-blowing. And holy shit, there's a bit early on where Lawrence first gets his fancy silk robes from his new Arab allies and he uses his dagger as a mirror to check himself out, and he's all pristine and looks great. Then towards the end after a big battle when he's all bloody and his robes are filthy, he pulls out the dagger again (caked in blood this time) and looks at what he's become. It's pure genius. I hope I get the chance to see this someday on a massive screen, because what already looks great on a big flatscreen must look even better projected in 70mm.
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Post by okcomputer on Apr 27, 2020 12:16:08 GMT -5
Forgot one...
Underwater - 5/10
Extremely forgettable mashup of Alien and The Abyss. It's dark (you can barely see shit), it's boring, it's lazy... it's a bad movie. It's a bad movie until the end, where the big monster gets revealed, and it's [REDACTED]. They never call it that, but it's totally [REDACTED]. Apparently the director even admitted that the big monster is actually... that. Also, TJ Miller dies which is always a huge plus.
So it has a TJ Miller death scene (love those) and it has HOLY SHIT IT'S [REDACTED], which isn't quite enough to make up for the other 80 minutes of crappy thrift store sci-fi.
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 27, 2020 19:37:14 GMT -5
For a better mashup of Alien and The Abyss (and The Thing), check out the movie Leviathan, starring Peter Weller.
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 27, 2020 19:42:33 GMT -5
Godfather III's greatest fault is that Sophia Coppola is a shit actress and her character has too big a role, considering that. Winona Ryder was initially signed on to play Mary, and would have been a thousand times better. Robert Duvall returning (and the studio paying him closer to what they were paying the other returning cast) would have helped a lot, too. Eli Wallach is my favorite part of that movie. He was an extremely underrated actor.
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Post by GhostRider5289 on Apr 28, 2020 0:55:27 GMT -5
Finally saw It Chapter 2 last night and yeah it wasn't as tight as Chapter 1 but I still enjoyed it a good bit. The adult cast was just as entertaining as the kids. Forgot one... Underwater - 5/10 Extremely forgettable mashup of Alien and The Abyss. It's dark (you can barely see shit), it's boring, it's lazy... it's a bad movie. It's a bad movie until the end, where the big monster gets revealed, and it's [REDACTED]. They never call it that, but it's totally [REDACTED]. Apparently the director even admitted that the big monster is actually... that. Also, TJ Miller dies which is always a huge plus. So it has a TJ Miller death scene (love those) and it has HOLY SHIT IT'S [REDACTED], which isn't quite enough to make up for the other 80 minutes of crappy thrift store sci-fi. Was it Cthulu? I bet it was Cthulu.
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Post by okcomputer on Apr 28, 2020 9:17:09 GMT -5
It was Cthulhu. He shows up at the very end, gets blown up but probably gets away, but since this movie is never getting a sequel we have to keep waiting for more stealth Lovecraft movies.
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Post by okcomputer on Apr 28, 2020 9:46:27 GMT -5
Godfather III's greatest fault is that Sophia Coppola is a shit actress and her character has too big a role, considering that. Winona Ryder was initially signed on to play Mary, and would have been a thousand times better. Robert Duvall returning (and the studio paying him closer to what they were paying the other returning cast) would have helped a lot, too. Eli Wallach is my favorite part of that movie. He was an extremely underrated actor. Winona Ryder would have been infinitely better to play Mary, and George Hamilton's character should've been Tom Hagen. And watching it last week I kept thinking that maybe Don Altobello (Eli Wallach's character) was intended to be an older Clemenza, but maybe there was still the same bad blood that kept Richard Castellano out of Part II. But then I remembered they specifically mention in Part II that Clemenza died under mysterious circumstances so that wouldn't work either. I guess when 1970's Paramount executives write an actor out of a movie they made sure to bury the body in the Everglades. But as good as Wallach is in Part III, his character is still yet another scheming former business partner with a vendetta against the Corleones, which by the third movie is a bit stale. The plot about the corruption in the Vatican ruining Michael's last ditch attempt at redemption was more than enough to carry the movie, and might have had more room to breathe without the Altobello character at all. So Part III remains this weird curiosity of a movie. The fact that it's a Godfather movie makes it both better and worse somehow, but the movie is ultimately an unnecessary conclusion to what was already a flawless, tragic character arc across two untouchable masterpieces. The final shot of Part II, of Michael sitting in his father's chair, a morally dead and hopelessly doomed man, is such a perfect place to leave the character. The final shot of Part III is Michael sitting in a chair again, all alone, and literally dying this time. It's ultimately pointless.
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