Movie opinions thread (what have you seen, what did you think?)

terry.330

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I don’t know who that is.
He's a comic book writer known for Transmetropolitan.

Doomsday- A mess but a damn fun one. A mix between Escape from New York, Mad Max and Mission Impossible set in near future Scotland. A group of military specialists need to retrieve a vaccine in order stop a worldwide human extinction. The vaccine is in Scotland which is basically a walled off wasteland filled with murderous cannibalistic waring gangs. It's all pretty ridiculous and easily could have come off as total schlock on the level of the Resident Evil movies. Thankfully Neil Marshall makes it all work for the most part and even when it doesn't work it's so fast paced and crazy it really doesn't matter.
 

jro

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He's a comic book writer known for Transmetropolitan.

Doomsday- A mess but a damn fun one. A mix between Escape from New York, Mad Max and Mission Impossible set in near future Scotland. A group of military specialists need to retrieve a vaccine in order stop a worldwide human extinction. The vaccine is in Scotland which is basically a walled off wasteland filled with murderous cannibalistic waring gangs. It's all pretty ridiculous and easily could have come off as total schlock on the level of the Resident Evil movies. Thankfully Neil Marshall makes it all work for the most part and even when it doesn't work it's so fast paced and crazy it really doesn't matter.
I generally can't remember the main storyline for Doomsday even though I've watched it repeatedly, but I sure as hell know the setpieces and I never get bored of it.

Kinda the Neil Marshall experience in a nutshell.
 

SouthtownKid

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Live-action Spider-Man movie round up (leaving aside spin-offs or Spider-Man guest appearances in Avengers or whatever):

1. Spider-Man 2
2. Spider-Man
3. Spider-Man 3 (already we're starting the drastic drop off)
4. Amazing Spider-Man (the fact this movie manages to beat anything just shows how badly they've used the character overall)
5. Homecoming, barely beating out:
6. Amazing Spider-Man 2
7. those janky live-action TV movies from the 1970s
8. No Way Home, aka Nostalgia: The Movie, starring Cheap Sentimentality
9. Far From Home

Keep in mind those rankings are only in terms of making a Spider-Man movie. For example, Far From Home is the worst representation of Peter Parker and his supporting cast ever committed to celluloid (or digital, or whatever). But taken as its own thing in a vacuum, as if Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, etc. were never born and the Spider-Man character never existed before, Far From Home is an infinitely better made movie than Amazing Spider-Man. So I'm only judging them as attempts at adapting the source material in some way.

And all of them were better than that self-indulgent, horribly-constructed with no third act, disjointed mess, Dune by Villenueve.
 

terry.330

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Honestly the PS4 game is the best Spiderman thing in years aside from Spiderverse.
 

terry.330

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Another sad commentary. Kind of like how those first two Arkham games were the best representation of Batman and his world for a good long while.
It's also a testament to the quality of the game but I get what you're saying.

Assault on Precinct 13- Watched this last night and I think this is one of Carpenters movies that I doesn't get enough recognition. Like most of his stuff it's foregoes being slick for just being a lean and tight film with a nice small focus that doesn't come off as limiting. The tension and atmosphere are great and the action is solid, the cast while not outstanding all do well and the score accompanies the tension well. It's just a well made and efficient piece.
 
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100proof

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Agreed on AoP13. It may not be the best Carpenter movie but it might be the most Carpenter movie. It's dirty, it's nihilistic, it's ruthlessly efficient and it's socially conscious without mama-birding a message to you. I love his apocalypse movies and Halloween is perfectly executed but AoP13 I think represents his style of filmmaking. That or Escape from NY.
 

Syn

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I remember watching Assault and being shocked they killed America's sweetheart Kim Richards.
 

100proof

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Do you know if this one ever came to Steam?

Funny you should ask.

 

Lagduf

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Ha, nice! My Steam Deck arrives on Friday. I’ll be curious to see if this one works on the deck. That was one of the PA4 games I always wanted to play.
 

SouthtownKid

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I love Assault on Precinct 13.

"In the meantime, I've got this plan... It's called SAVE-ASS."
-- Tony 'Duke' Evers
trainer of Apollo Creed


Crazy to think the first Rocky movie came out only about 3 weeks after Assault on Precinct 13.
 

Burning Fight!!

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I wanted to see Napoleon Wilson in more stuff... he has moments.
And that hot police secretary too lol.
 

terry.330

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Road Games- Stacy Keach is a long haul trucker in Australia that just happens to be following the same path as a serial killer who's abducting young women and dismembering them and disposing of them piece by piece across the country. Keach picks up Jamie Lee Curtis hitchhiking and they begin to investigate the killer who is aware that they are on to him and begins to taunt them. Curtis ends up getting herself kidnapped and Keach pursues. A somewhat unique Hitchcockian thriller with great performances and chemistry by Curtis and Keach, unfortunately they don't actually get a lot of screen time together. Some great scenery of the outback and possibly the slowest chase scene in history which while effective is also kind of hilarious. Actually the whole movie has a rather goofy tone that overlays the tension. A bit of a hidden gem.
 

SouthtownKid

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Prospect. This was really good. A super low budget science fiction movie, but every dollar is on the screen and used to great effect. First feature film by two guys out of film school who both wrote and both directed the movie, like the Coen brothers do. Super strong debut.

 

fake

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Prospect. This was really good. A super low budget science fiction movie, but every dollar is on the screen and used to great effect. First feature film by two guys out of film school who both wrote and both directed the movie, like the Coen brothers do. Super strong debut.

Agreed - this is a good one. Nice and short too.
 

terry.330

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Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Mehness- Every time I watch one of these I'm reminded why I skipped the previous handful. I'm glad Sam Raimi got to put a bit of his flair on this but aside from that it's yet another forgettable assembly line Marvel movie that I'll likely never think about again. I didn't watch Wanda-vision so I didn't give two shits about her kids, America seems like she was created just for this movie and Rachel McAdams is beyond blah. Same problems as all these movies, by trying to please everyone they end up with just another piece of bland disposable junk in a long line of disposable junk. Even worse is that unless you've seen all the movies and shows you won't know half of what's going on. Disney is so adverse to risk that we'll never get lower budget smaller one offs where there's more room for taking chances, which is what the genre desperately needs.

Also all the magic has zero impact behind it, it's almost as bad as the dozen heroes vs. a faceless clone cgi army or world ending space laser nonsense. At least this had a lot of Raimi's patented camera work, dissolves and shot transitions. Even if they were toned down. People expecting Evil Dead 2 levels of wackiness were out of their minds if they thought Disney was gonna let that shit fly.
 

100proof

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Watched This is GWAR while assembling my new server last night. A two and a half hour documentary about the lives and times of everyone's favorite rubber monster thrash metal art collective. The 2.5 hours whiz by (there's 35+ years of history to go through) and there's a ton of footage of the band's early days, behind the scenes and everyone outside of their costumes. For someone who's been going to GWAR shows for 25 years, it was a fun little stroll down memory lane with all of the interpersonal drama and bickering you'd expect from your average rock band documentary. I knew a lot of the twists and turns but there's some definitely some fucked up "Behind the Music" level shit for a band that comes off goofy at first blush (multiple overdoses, guitarist getting shot by an undercover cop and nearly bleeding out and dying in the bassist's arms, people ditching the band and not even telling anyone, etc.). One of the big takeaways for me is their DIY spirit (the members of the band create and build all of the weird shit they have at their shows) and that they're all kind of nerds just grinding out a living doing what they love.

I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys a music documentary (as it has all of the expected highs, lows and crazy excess) but I'm a fan so take that with a grain of salt. Even as bands go, GWAR has always been weird so I imagine it would be an entertaining watch even without being a fan. That said, I'd doubly recommend that everyone goes to a GWAR live show before they finally call it quits. The music is almost irrelevant and you go for the pure spectacle of seeing celebrities being decapitated, politicians being flayed alive, fans being fed to various grotesqueries, the first eight to ten rows of people getting sprayed down with fake blood and cum like it's a fucking Gallagher show... it's a wholesome experience for the whole family.
 

jro

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I'm (sort of) going back through early 90's horror at the moment, last up was In the Mouth of Madness. It doesn't have that effortless ability to entertain like Demon Knight does, but I'd forgotten just how incredibly well it uses deliberate pacing to add to the movie and how it also generally respects the audience's intelligence more than a lot of movies in both that and in not ever over-explaining. Carpenter probably had a lot to do with that but it's also a really good script that I had forgotten he didn't actually write. Sam Neill is also really good in it IMO.

Definitely still worth watching, to me at least.
 

terry.330

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Salem's Lot- The 3+ hour made for TV movie from 1979 based on Stephen King's story and directed by Tobe Hooper and boy does it feel like a made for TV movie from 1979 lol.

Like all lengthy King adaptations it's a mess of superfluous side characters, bizarre one off bits that go nowhere and character details that don't impact the story. It's quite slow and feels very flat, part of that is the time period it was made in and the editing but I think this lacking any real hook or spark to it is mostly down to the studio and the limitations of broadcast TV at the time. Not to mention the source material, if this had been a paired down regular movie I think it would have faired much better. As it is it's a meandering, slow adaptation of an already messy story like so many of the other King projects at the time.

It's still an enjoyable goofy piece with King's eccentricities all over it, for better or worse. It scared the shit out of me when I was little and it still holds some nostalgic value though not as much as I had hoped for.
 

fake

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I didn’t read this post ^ because I’m 600 pages into Salems Lot - my first official King book. (I read the Running Man which was under a pen name.)
 

Lagduf

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Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Mehness- Every time I watch one of these I'm reminded why I skipped the previous handful. I'm glad Sam Raimi got to put a bit of his flair on this but aside from that it's yet another forgettable assembly line Marvel movie that I'll likely never think about again. I didn't watch Wanda-vision so I didn't give two shits about her kids, America seems like she was created just for this movie and Rachel McAdams is beyond blah. Same problems as all these movies, by trying to please everyone they end up with just another piece of bland disposable junk in a long line of disposable junk. Even worse is that unless you've seen all the movies and shows you won't know half of what's going on. Disney is so adverse to risk that we'll never get lower budget smaller one offs where there's more room for taking chances, which is what the genre desperately needs.

Also all the magic has zero impact behind it, it's almost as bad as the dozen heroes vs. a faceless clone cgi army or world ending space laser nonsense. At least this had a lot of Raimi's patented camera work, dissolves and shot transitions. Even if they were toned down. People expecting Evil Dead 2 levels of wackiness were out of their minds if they thought Disney was gonna let that shit fly.

They should have pulled a Seinfeld after End Game came out. They had a 10 year arc with some fun films and a few stinkers that ended pretty well, some decent character resolution.

But Disney is a fucking whore.

From Iron Man to Endgame Marvel more less bottled lightning. It isn’t happening ever again. We might get an entertaining film here and now (or a show) but post endgame probably the best thing that has come out was Loki.

Also “What If?” but that’s not in the mainline continuity.

The current “arc” is entirely directionless and I guess Kang the Conqueror is the badguy? It’s not really apparent.

Same shit with live action Star Wars. It’s all shit except Mando.
 

SouthtownKid

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I'm (sort of) going back through early 90's horror at the moment, last up was In the Mouth of Madness. It doesn't have that effortless ability to entertain like Demon Knight does, but I'd forgotten just how incredibly well it uses deliberate pacing to add to the movie and how it also generally respects the audience's intelligence more than a lot of movies in both that and in not ever over-explaining. Carpenter probably had a lot to do with that but it's also a really good script that I had forgotten he didn't actually write. Sam Neill is also really good in it IMO.

Definitely still worth watching, to me at least.
Yeah, we rewatched this again maybe a year ago, maybe two. And it does hold up very well. It holds up maybe a little better than Prince of Darkness, although I like that one better. And of course neither of them can touch The Thing. But all three are great and I like to revisit each of them every few years or so.


I didn’t read this post ^ because I’m 600 pages into Salems Lot - my first official King book. (I read the Running Man which was under a pen name.)
Read The Long Walk. It should be in the same collection of short stories as Running Man, and it's the only other truly good thing King ever wrote. Ironically, as you point out, under a pen name.
 
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