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

[100proof]

Wasn't judging... more just making a personal observation that while I still find Neil Breen amusing, he's much less amusing now that he's been doing this for nearly 20 years and keeps making the same bad movie over and over again.

 

[jro]

Mostly random re-watches on things I've been meaning to go back to:

The Sadness - somehow maybe even a little more messed up than I remembered, I think I paid closer attention to the subtitles this time around and realized, yes, that eye socket really was, yeah. It's still a really good zombie movie though, overall, just with things set to overkill from the start and no dialing it down at any point.

Parasite - one of the more rewarding re-watches I can think of, the dynamics between the two families are much more telling throughout when you know where it's leading.

Snowpiercer - somehow less good than I remembered, IMO. The setpieces are still good and Tilda Swinton still cracks me up, but the storytelling feels a bit clunky to me for some reason. Maybe judging it against Parasite isn't fair.

Aliens - eh... Paxton chewing the scenery with all his might is pretty endearing but Alien holds up better.

Mad Max: Fury Road - never going to get tired of this one I don't think. Hardy and Theron are both just right and it never lets you get remotely bored. Looking quite forward to Furiosa.

Predators - it's not bad. Brody works fine as an action star and the rest of the cast are alright, script works better than the terrible later sequel with Olivia Munn though Prey is easily the best after the original.

Murder Party - to my surprise, I think this holds up the best of the Saulnier trio. Simple story told well with good performances and zero filler along with some fun setpieces.

Blue Ruin - Blair is very good here, and he better be since he's in pretty much every single scene. One of my favorite revenge stories still, though I like MP better overall.

Green Room - third or fourth time re-watching it and I still mostly like it but more for small aspects like Yelchin's performance, the attention to detail with the BJJ stuff, the last line of the movie, few other little things more so than the whole movie. Dunno why but as a whole it's my least-favorite of the Saulnier stuff.

The Last Winter - I expected too much of this given the reviews and Fessenden's pedigree, but it was somewhere between bad and awful. Perlman was terrible in the lead IMO and didn't appear to be getting any direction at all and none of the rest of the cast was much better. Hilariously dumb ending also. Fessenden's fascination/obsession with Wendigos led to better things, luckily, but man was this bad.

 

[SouthtownKid]

Finally saw Dinner in America a couple days back. Yeah, it's tremendous. That and Inherent Vice are probably my two favorite things I've watched in a long while.

 

[HellioN]

Watched "Godzilla Minus One".
It was great.

 

[terry.330]

Onechanbara- Janky low budget source material goes in and a janky low budget movie comes out. Kind of hard to fuck this one up, it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Hot chicks, swords, guns, zombies and general goofiness. The main chick is actually pretty good and definitely looks like the character, her costume looked great too.

Machine Girl- This one is pretty notorious, hadn't seen it in probably a decade. Just as ridiculous and crazy as I remembered. Made for a good double feature with Onechanbara.

 

[fake]

Threads - This was a BBC made-for-TV movie from the '80s on how a nuke hitting Sheffield, England would unfold. It's pretty scary and definitely disturbing. It comes across as pretty honest and not some Cold War scare tactic. I hope I don't get nuked.

 

[Average Joe]

Threads - This was a BBC made-for-TV movie from the '80s on how a nuke hitting Sheffield, England would unfold. It's pretty scary and definitely disturbing. It comes across as pretty honest and not some Cold War scare tactic. I hope I don't get nuked.

I wish I could unsee that movie.

I went through a phase of watching a lot of the most notoriously disturbing films, but nothing has ever stuck in my head in a troubling way like Threads.

 

[terry.330]

There was an American TV movie like that as well. Not sure when it came out, early 80's maybe late 70's. I remember my sister telling about how it scared the shit out of everybody when it came out.

 

[Average Joe]

There was an American TV movie like that as well. Not sure when it came out, early 80's maybe late 70's. I remember my sister telling about how it scared the shit out of everybody when it came out.

I know there is one called "Special Bulletin" which is about nuclear terrorism. It's shot like a Live News show and actually freaked a lot of people out when it aired since many thought it was real.

 

[terry.330]

I know there is one called "Special Bulletin" which is about nuclear terrorism. It's shot like a Live News show and actually freaked a lot of people out when it aired since many thought it was real.

There's that one and there's also another one that's mostly just detonation test footage with a little narration. Lots of footage of those staged test towns and landscapes being obliterated as well as atmospheric and underwater tests. Suposedly some of the footage has been proven to be fake because there wasn't a way to actually film that stuff up close at the time.

 

[Average Joe]

Thanksgiving

I hate Eli Roth so I'm not even sure why I watched this...

It has a lot of really positive reviews on Letterboxd, but I get the vibe that a lot of those people don't watch a lot of Slashers because this was kind of mid. Visually it lacks any real grit or style and looks too clean--the original Grindhouse trailer had more going on in terms of looks. The cast and Final Girl are all pretty lame and forgettable, but for the most part that isn't an issue for me most of the time in Slashers so that's a pass. Has some decent kills, but nothing too bonkers as some reviews lead me to believe. Fairly terrible and predictable ending, but I kind of expected that, so expectations met I guess.

 

[Stefan]

There was an American TV movie like that as well. Not sure when it came out, early 80's maybe late 70's. I remember my sister telling about how it scared the shit out of everybody when it came out.

Could be the ABC movie that Nicholas Meyer directed after completing Star Trek: Wrath of Khan for Paramount. Vaguely remember seeing John Lithgow & JoBeth Williams on its VHS box several years following the broadcast. "The Days Afterward" or some such.

 

[fake]

In a similar vein I watched Ghost Watch last month. I forget if I mentioned it here. But it’s another BBC special - a docudrama about a haunted house. It borrows heavily from the Enfield case and had a lot of viewers thinning it was real. Worth a watch IMO. It brought me right back to Halloween specials from when I was a kid.

 

[jro]

"I want my old job back!"

Holy shit did Verhoeven nail that about 30 years ago.

 

[terry.330]

Thanksgiving

Agreed on all points. Aside from the gore (which was oddly boring) this is basically just another generic disposable PG-13 slasher that happens to be Thanksgiving themed, completely forgettable. What's really weird is that there is zero style, the whole movie is just so blah. It's based on a fake trailer from Grindhouse but you'd never know it. What's even the point? There's a little bit of Roth's signature dumb weird humor but that certainly doesn't make the movie any better, just more annoying.


Pieces- Now this is the kind of movie Eli Roth dreams about making. Just pure sleaze. The movie's tagline is "It's exactly what you think it is" and it delivers on that. A disturbed young boy is punished by his mother for putting together an erotic puzzle, he snaps killing her and dismembering her body. 40 years later he reemerges on a college campus, slaughtering coeds and collecting their body parts attempting recreate his dead mother.

It's framed as a mystery but the movie is so illogical and flat out dumb that it's laughable. There's tons of gore, nudity and some truly atrocious acting that is helped by an equally atrocious dub. If you're a fan of shameless euro sleaze and slashers it's a bit of a treasure.

 

[famicommander]

Dune 2 certified fresh at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. 88 reviews, average score 8.7/10. 94% from top critics, 8.1/10 average.

Part 1 is sitting at 83% with an average of 7.6/10; 78% with an average of 7.7/10 from top critics.

Other Villeneuve films
Blade Runner 2049 - 88%
Arrival - 94%
Sicario - 92%
Enemy - 71%
Prisoners - 87%

 

[terry.330]

GTFO with that Dune bullshit, go find that old Dune thread if you want to sperg out.

 

[famicommander]

GTFO with that Dune bullshit, go find that old Dune thread if you want to sperg out.

Still at 97% with 105 reviews

 

[Hattori Hanzo]

Nobody cares about the review scores. Will rewatch the Lynch Dune for the 100th time.

 

[famicommander]

Nobody cares about the review scores. Will rewatch the Lynch Dune for the 100th time.

Thank god he didn't get to make his sequel. The script leaked out and it started out with a 10 minute song and dance number by a character not even in the book.

 

[Hattori Hanzo]

Will also rewatch the Jodorowsky's Dune documentary.

 

[sirlynxalot]

I watched this movie called Bottoms recently. It's a 2023 comedy about lesbian high school students who start a fight club because they think it will help them score with cheerleaders. It also has a bunch of violence in it, people getting bloody and even killed, which you wouldn't expect from a movie like this. But that's kind of the point, the movie very self consciously tries to flout norms associated with high school movies. Not sure that current high school students are the target audience as they wouldn't get all the jokes and references... All in all, it was good, I recommend it. Btw the movie was written by women, which I thought was interesting given the level of violence. I also watched it with two women, who greatly enjoyed it.

 

[SouthtownKid]

Thank god he didn't get to make his sequel. The script leaked out and it started out with a 10 minute song and dance number by a character not even in the book.

"Didn't get to" lol

Try "Didn't want to". He said it was the worst experience of his life. Although one great thing did come out of it (two, if you count Blue Velvet): Lynch learned always to demand final cut on anything he worked on. If he hadn't had such a bad experience so early in his career, he might not have learned to demand final cut, and might have continued to make artistically compromised movies he was only half-happy with for the rest of his days.

I did watch the Villenueve Dune a second time a little while back, and did enjoy it more than the first time in the theater. Although it still wasn't great. It has a ton of problems. For whatever people praise about his visuals, he's still a clunky storyteller. Villenueve says he's a huge Dune fan, but he misses the mark on a lot of things, including character stuff, even with the extended (i.e. bloated) run time. And for all the things he was able to include in the longer run time, some of the choices of things he still left out are kind of fucking mystifying.

All that being said, I am looking forward to Dune part 2 hitting streaming. Definitely not repeating the mistake of going to the theater for it.

 

[famicommander]

"Didn't get to" lol

Try "Didn't want to". He said it was the worst experience of his life. Although one great thing did come out of it (two, if you count Blue Velvet): Lynch learned always to demand final cut on anything he worked on. If he hadn't had such a bad experience so early in his career, he might not have learned to demand final cut, and might have continued to make artistically compromised movies he was only half-happy with for the rest of his days.

Dino and his idiot daughter didn't force Lynch to make the stupidest choice in the history of filmmaking, having all of his characters make diarrhea faces at the camera for minutes at time while their whispered internal monologues got dubbed in. There's no way to salvage the movie after that decision.

 

[Average Joe]

Dino and his idiot daughter didn't force Lynch to make the stupidest choice in the history of filmmaking, having all of his characters make diarrhea faces at the camera for minutes at time while their whispered internal monologues got dubbed in. There's no way to salvage the movie after that decision.

Lynch's initial cut was nearly three hours long, so as far as any of us know, they very well might have had direct influence on those choices since they imposed a strict two hour run time.