Movies you've just watched

[AeroBranford]

Recently watched American Psycho and No Country for Old Men. Expected to like them both more than I actually did, but still enjoyable overall. The main enjoyment of them came from their "psychopath" characters (Bateman and Chigurh respectively), although Chigurh felt more like a force of nature that the entire cast has to survive, while Bateman was the opposite, and felt like he was lashing out at a society he had no control over.

[vol.2]

Recently watched American Psycho and No Country for Old Men. Expected to like them both more than I actually did, but still enjoyable overall. The main enjoyment of them came from their "psychopath" characters (Bateman and Chigurh respectively), although Chigurh felt more like a force of nature that the entire cast has to survive, while Bateman was the opposite, and felt like he was lashing out at a society he had no control over.

Great movie, but even better book. Bret Easton Ellis also recently had another novel turned into a movie on Netflix called White Noise. It's not as good (of a movie), but worth checking out if you're a fan of the style. Of course there's also Less Than Zero.

[drauch]

Isn't White Noise the Don DeLillo adaptation from Noah Baumbach?

[vol.2]

Isn't White Noise the Don DeLillo adaptation from Noah Baumbach?

yep. I blame karaoke last night on my forgetfulness

[emphatic]

Of course there's also Less Than Zero.

Don't forget The Rules Of Attraction, it even has Patrick Bateman's younger brother as the lead character. I remember it fondly, need to re-watch soon.

[xxx1993]

Just watched Nimona on Netflix.

[vol.2]

The Dial of Destiny 7.5/10

So relieved that I didn't hate it. Just not having Shia in it went a long way, but they also dialed back the campy humor that overwhelmed Crystal Skull quite a bit and paid more attention to the writing. It's not a perfect movie by any means, but I found enough to like about it that it kept me interested the whole way through, and it didn't feel stale like the last 6-7 Bond films did. There was a number of obligatory call-backs to the first three movies, and some that were fairly subtle, but it didn't feel like it was trying to cruise on nostalgia. I thought the story was genuinely compelling most of the time, and I was invested in the characters and excited by the action scenes. I can't imagine expecting it to be any better.

[Vexorg]

The Parent Trap (1998 version): **1/2

Remake of a 1961 Disney movie starring a pre-cray-cray Lindsay Lohan in her first film role (I guess it's hard to be too cray-cray when you're only 11 at the time.) Two girls are sent to a summer camp and soon come to realize that they are identical twins (both played by Lohan, similar to how both twins in the original were played by Hayley Mills) separated at birth who then make a plan to swap places and get their divorced parents back together, which is complicated by the fact that Dad is currently engaged to your standard-issue gold digger. Reasonably OK for Eisner-era live action Disney fare, but the main issue with this one is that it drags on a bit too long. In 2018 it was announced that a third remake was coming for Disney+, but I would assume it's currently stuck in development hell since it hasn't shown up yet.

[cj iwakura]

Finally caught the original Assault on Precinct 13 on TV in the UK*, and it was one heck of an unrelenting roller coaster. My friend described it as effectively a zombie movie, and he's not wrong. I'm stunned they got away with that killing back then, much less today. (Music was incredible too, of course.)


*Their taste in syndicated movies is amazing. To name a few, they were showing the Indiana Jones movies, The Guest, Ready or Not, The Equalizer, Deadpool 1 & 2, etc etc. It made the trip a lot more bearable. (And all unedited!)

[xxx1993]

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. A worthy sendoff for our archeologist hero.

[NYN]

I'm stunned they got away with that killing back then, much less today.

Do you know the bit? MPAA wanted it excised as per definition. Boss looked at the release numbers for it. Said 'tween smokes: "Naw!" And the rest... as they say. The fave Carpenter of my gal pal, and I can't figure out as to why. It's not even that feminine, yet The Thing has under zero on that scale and she digs that one highly. Chicks, huh? Must be the music, though.

(Music was incredible too, of course.)

(Do you hear that, SuperPang?! DO YOU HEAR THAT?)

[emphatic]

Rewatched DREDD last night. Still 5/5.

[Lander]

Dredd is great. Set jaw, helmet stays on, ultraviolence aplenty, what more could you want. I suppose the Lawmaster could stand to be a bit chunkier, but that's a nitpick.

Not a complaint as such, but I thought it was an unusual depiction of Mega City One. More eastern european misery than the traditional hyperglitz, to the point where it could have passed for a contemporary vision of East-Meg Two absent old stony face.

[emphatic]

To this day, the best use of 3D in a cinema. All the slo-mo scenes were stunning. Kick-ass soundtrack too.

[xxx1993]

Just watched The Out-Laws on Netflix. I... have no comment.

[NYN]

That says it all. No, really. Don't fall back on only naming the title, please. Without actually bothering about the production, I feel that this is bottom level for you, right?
Surprising, I thought nearly everything you might pick is somehow a winner. Rare indeed.

[xxx1993]

It was a bit funny at times, and Pierce Brosnan did a good job, plus there's a pretty awesome and hilarious car chase set in a graveyard near the end, but the rest of it is just... meh.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Dredd was a real balls to the wall, fuck-me-what-the-shit-is-going-on-here-hand-me-my-bong-affair, and I haven't even seen it in 3D. It was a huge surprise to me that films like this still get made today. For this film alone, Alex Garland deserves all the praise he can get (I enjoyed all of his films, and like Dredd, they're all based on his own scripts).

[xxx1993]

Just saw Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, and it's already leaving me thirsty for Part Two. At least the ending of this movie isn't as heavy-handed as Fast X.

[Volteccer_Jack]

Dead Reckoning Part One is a frustrating watch. It's the longest Mission Impossible movie to date, and also the one with the least plot. The main thing it does is establish a lot of plot threads and then resolve none of them. "Will Ethan Hunt kill this guy?" is supposed to be a question of big drama and suspense, but we the audience don't even know who that guy is, and are only given vague hints as to why Ethan would want him dead.

I really hate how the entire plot of Part One is a bunch of people killing each other over a useless hunk of metal. All the world's intelligence agencies, we are told, are fighting over a key that supposedly will allow them to control the world. But it's stated outright that nobody except the Russians (and one or two other people) know how to use the key or even what it is a key to, which makes it seem like everybody is willing to kill for this key for no reason except the fact that they know the Russians are willing to kill for it. The Russians also don't exist in the plot at all so far despite having a bigger stake in it than anyone else and being the original owners of the key, but maybe they're being saved for Part Two. Strictly speaking this problem is just the result of the exposition scenes at the beginning of the movie being badly written. But again, this is the longest Mission Impossible movie to date. This entire movie is just a big setup for the next one, so it's inexcusable for it to be a lazily written setup.

Spoilers since I'm complaining about the third act:

Spoiler

It's not explicitly stated, but the implication is that everything that happens on the train is according to the AI's plan. This is a problem for me because the only way that makes any fucking sense is if the AI is fucking omniscient. Grace underwent a full character arc and made a life-changing decision not because of her natural growth as a person leading to a satisfying conclusion, but because the AI tricked her into doing all that, in order to get her to stand in a particular spot at the right moment for a Rube Goldberg machine to go off correctly and drop the key at Gabriel's feet. It also completely deflates the idea of Ethan pickpocketing the key back from Gabriel, because if the computer was able to perfectly predict Grace and Ethan's emotional states and decisions to the extent of having them both meet at a particular spot at a particular second, then it easily would have known that Ethan would take the key from Gabriel. But then if that's the case, why does Gabriel act surprised to have lost the key? Either the AI is infallible and Gabriel has nothing to be upset about, or the AI is fallible and the entire train sequence is nonsensical bullshit.

The whole subplot with Gabriel knowing that the villain lady will betray him suggests that the AI has such godlike predictive abilities that it not only knew Ethan would survive the train crash, but also that he would only survive by getting help from the villain lady moments before succumbing to her wounds. Did the AI predict exactly which square inch of her body would get stabbed and calculate her remaining lifespan down to the second? You what fuck it, if it predicted Ethan parachuting onto the train and busting through that window at that exact moment, then it can probably predict entire novels word for word that haven't been written yet.

Everything is pointing to a big reveal that the AI is intentionally orchestrating events to help Ethan kill it, which is really lame, destroys any drama this story could have, and makes all character growth/arcs feel artificial. Ilsa didn't die fighting valiantly to save Grace, she just got murdered by a computer to motivate Ethan. Well, unless it turns out they faked her death twice, which I wouldn't put past them considering how the script carefully avoids having Ethan/Luther/Benji state that she is dead.

On the subject of Ilsa, really weird how the movie treats her and Grace as as equally important to Ethan, after the previous movie told us that Ilsa was one of only two women Ethan has ever loved in a scene where characters were visibly holding back tears. Feels like they want to pretend they didn't do that because it is inconvenient to their goal of replacing her with a new girl. Unless of course it's a big fakeout LOL.

Despite all that, I think the movie is good. Nowhere near as great as Rogue Nation or Fallout, but still good. Maybe wait until Part Two comes out next year before you see Part One, since Part One is a 3 hour long cocktease.

[Vexorg]

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One

I'd just ditto the above post, but that's probably what The Entity expects me to do. I wouldn't say that this wasn't a bad movie, but I'm not sure I can necessarily say it's a good one either. This series has a bad habit of taking characters and killing them off for no good reason but to add drama (see also: Director Hunley from the last one) and tends to make death cheap as a result. The plot of this one feels rehashed from something non specific (the whole "God's Eye" thing from the Fast and the Furious series comes to mind, and that's not a series you want to be emulating if you want people to take you seriously) and mostly serves as an excuse for the obligatory 3 or 4 big budget action set pieces you get from your standard issue Summer blockbuster. But hey, the tickets were $5 each and the theater was air conditioned.

No grade on this one, it was basically half a movie in spite of a nearly three hour runtime, and at this rate the SAG-AFTRA strike will very likely end up delaying the sequel (ironically one of the major issues in the WGA and SAG strikes is the threat of writers and actors being replaced by AI.). In theory these are supposed to be the last Tom Cruise M:I movies but at this rate he's going to be hanging off airplanes when he's 75. If they're trying to establish Grace as the next Ethan Hunt it's going to be a bit of a hard sell.

[vol.2]

MI Dead Reckoning 6/10

I was disappointed. There was some good stuff here; the action sequences were mostly well done and exciting, and there were some really stand-out performances by the cast. I was really impressed with Pom Klementieff's work, and also Vanessa Kirby. Production values were very high; photgraphy and editing were top notch.
Unfortunately, I really just found the movie to be pretty boring a lot of the time, and I got antsy and felt like leaving about 2/3rds of the way through. The plot was recycled junk, and the overall theme of rogue AI really felt way too on-the-nose and silly. Tom Cruise really felt like he was phoning in the performance this time around, and it also occurred to me just how old he actually is now. I wouldn't recommend spending movie theater money on this one.

[neorichieb1971]

MI : Dead Reckoning

6/10

It made me laugh that some of the music is right out of Turok 2 seeds of evil, one of the set pieces is right out of Uncharted 2 and it borrows a little from movies like the Italian job.

All being said its a stunt fest story. The story never grips, you know most of the time the team will escape, solve the puzzle etc. There are some comedic elements which helps and the women ain't too bad either. The problem is it just doesn't grip you with the story. I am more for pain and loss to victory, rather than just a token loss and lots of victory. A story needs an arc and this one is fixated on a plot that takes you for a ride, then you forget about it.

If your one of these Marvel lovers it will likely be your 10/10. If you just want to enjoy mezmerizing stunts, loud fast music and you don't care about much else it should be up your street.

[xxx1993]

The Machine. Bert Kreischer and his father are taken to Russia and are hunted by the Russian Mafia. It was pretty fun!

[BryanM]

Watched Free Guy, liked it quite a bit. Fun little movie. Maybe not as good toward the end, but eh you gotta front load your budget know whatta I mean? Kind of wish they didn't feel like every movie needed big conflict and a showdown at the end, and shoehorned romance, but they made it as least bad as they could.

Watched the M3GAN trailer. The low budget horror movies that studio pumps out has gotten a lot better buzz than the mainstream stuff does. M3GAN is definitely a movie I would watch if someone bribed me with a few pieces of fried chicken first. The fact we'll probably be living in such a world, saturated with creepy dolls, in three years makes it pertinent and timely, as well. I guess by the time the sequel rolls around it'll be a documentary, instead of speculative science fiction.



Was investimagating some of the sickos responsible for the unmakes that take away all the fun in old movies, like this little scene.... I was reminded that they made a sequel to Mary Poppins back in 2018. How do you make a sequel to Mary Poppins? I don't know, but they somehow did.

Seeing cut story boarded scenes in the Incredibles 2 is such a downer. Since most of that stuff (funeral scene, etc) was better than most of what ended up in the final movie.

[BIL]

Watched the M3GAN trailer. The low budget horror movies that studio pumps out has gotten a lot better buzz than the mainstream stuff does. M3GAN is definitely a movie I would watch if someone bribed me with a few pieces of fried chicken first. The fact we'll probably be living in such a world, saturated with creepy dolls, in three years makes it pertinent and timely, as well. I guess by the time the sequel rolls around it'll be a documentary, instead of speculative science fiction.

Oh I recall that! I didn't quite trust it tbh, you never know these days, everything is shite! But I dug the concept. Always a good laugh when robots haul off and fuck up these watery bags of shite we charitably name "bodies!" Now that is existential horror re: AI for you!



BOOF! Now that's what a 10,000PSI metal fist can do FOR U

Thunderbolt And Lightfoot (1974) Clint Eastwood buddy roadtrip/heist caper, co-starring a babyfaced Jeff Bridges. Young shitbird LIGHTFOOT rescues fugitive safecracker THUNDERBOLT from his vengeful ex-crew, then accompanies him on One Last Score™! Mirthful crime antics ensue!



Amiably overlong, like many Eastwood pictures greater and lesser. Snuffs the opening's gleeful mayhem with an indulgent 45minute ~BROS ON TEH ROAD~ layover, leaning overly on wacky young Lightfoot - who I'm sure was tres hip n' cool BITD, but is a bit tiresome in these cynical post-Dude days. Pulls up nicely once Thunderbolt's old war buddy/partner in crime RED (an invaluable George Kennedy) and his disarmingly hapless minion GOODY arrive, emphasising the film's stronger black-comedic suit. Red's an unironically great antagonist; equal parts menacing and pitiful, whining about his asthma and hayfever while shamelessly pulling a piece after Clint manfully thrashes him mano-a-mano. The film's best stretch, by far, is watching these beleaguered crooks holding down day jobs, fractiously plotting that Last Big Job™ paycheque-to-paycheque, the climax unraveling with venomous elan.

A heartily irreverent romp in need of a stern buzzcut. Not a bad watch for a patient night. Bonus points for gorgeous landscape photography, and some surprisingly intense off-roading stunts across same. Also a young GARYBUSEY, in the same frame as young Jeff, even!

Speaking of trimming-down, rewatched Nazi Redemption Simulator SISU (2022) with MUH BROS and the old codger, but not just any SISU - my own THE PERFECT JUGULAR CUT



POWWA GEYZA!

Elided the universe-breaking endgame stunt, so SISU gets in @ ground level by implication. I'm normally a textualist to the bitter end, but that stunt were sugary SatAM shite m8! A man with that grip strength and endurance and explosive power would no longer be a man, but a demigod, who'd tear your screaming head off then fuck your hot gushing stump! Also replaced the cheesy GRRL power BGM a bit earlier with good ol' white noise. OST was a bit chipper for the atrocious circumstances, plus a bit of blown-out eardrum whine suits the vicious beating homie had sustained to his head neck and face, SISU tuned him up good son.

Fucking rocked even harder second time around God bless piracy (movie AND editor ) Biggest crowd pop went to the deathfrisbee, "The last - and worst - place a landmine should be found," with runner-up to the Great Tactics Value broadside, and a good laugh at the Commander's preceding prescient remark: "Let's get the FUCK out of here." Smart dude! Now, SISU/Wolf3D can join my other favourite videogame movies like REC/Biohazard, RAID REDEMPTION/Donky Dong, and TAKEN/Super Mario!

Yooo, I'm loving the colour select and img autoscale That's gonna save me a minute when SPERGING 2 tha X-TREEEM

[xxx1993]

Just saw Kandahar. It was average.

[Herr Schatten]

Finally got around to watching Blood and Gold on Netflix.

As a huge fan of Peter Thorwarth's works, this was mandatory for me. Objectively, it’s probably his weakest movie to date, as his comedies are funnier and Blood Red Sky has much better action, but that doesn’t mean that B&G isn’t a hell of a lot of fun.

Weirdly, it plays out like a Western movie in a WW2 setting. There’s a ton of comical violence that’s quite entertaining. The cast is good too. While, sadly, Jördis Triebel seems a little underchallenged, Alexander Scheer is as great as always and plays the villain with palpable delight.
The soundtrack is brilliant and adds a thick layer of sarcasm, but you probably have to be able to understand the German lyrics to get all the jokes.

If you expect this movie to be Tarantino-esque, however vaguely, you’ll be disappointed, but if you approach it on its own terms, you’ll have a good time.

[Sumez]

Isn't White Noise the Don DeLillo adaptation from Noah Baumbach?

Also worth noting that this movie is an absolute riot. I have never watched anything like it before, and don't expect anyone to ever do so again. So much weird stuff happening in it, most of it seemingly for no narrative purpose at all.
The humor is completely off the wall, and probably best compared to David Lynch's absurdist style of humor.

I have no idea how much of this is Noah Baumbach, and how much of it is in the book, but I do recommend anyone who's a fan of movies to not miss out on this one.

[Vexorg]

Thunderbolt And Lightfoot (1974) Clint Eastwood buddy roadtrip/heist caper, co-starring a babyfaced Jeff Bridges. Young shitbird LIGHTFOOT rescues fugitive safecracker THUNDERBOLT from his vengeful ex-crew, then accompanies him on One Last Score™! Mirthful crime antics ensue!

Amiably overlong, like many Eastwood pictures greater and lesser. Snuffs the opening's gleeful mayhem with an indulgent 45minute ~BROS ON TEH ROAD~ layover, leaning overly on wacky young Lightfoot - who I'm sure was tres hip n' cool BITD, but is a bit tiresome in these cynical post-Dude days. Pulls up nicely once Thunderbolt's old war buddy/partner in crime RED (an invaluable George Kennedy) and his disarmingly hapless minion GOODY arrive, emphasising the film's stronger black-comedic suit. Red's an unironically great antagonist; equal parts menacing and pitiful, whining about his asthma and hayfever while shamelessly pulling a piece after Clint manfully thrashes him mano-a-mano. The film's best stretch, by far, is watching these beleaguered crooks holding down day jobs, fractiously plotting that Last Big Job™ paycheque-to-paycheque, the climax unraveling with venomous elan.

A heartily irreverent romp in need of a stern buzzcut. Not a bad watch for a patient night. Bonus points for gorgeous landscape photography, and some surprisingly intense off-roading stunts across same. Also a young GARYBUSEY, in the same frame as young Jeff, even!

Never seen this, but I've been told that this was the movie playing at the drive-in the night my parents met for the first time. I'm told they didn't care much for it at the time. Should probably check it out some day for that very reason, and probably only for that very reason.