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

[HornheaDD]

The Naked Gun (2025):

It actually wasn't painfully terrible. It was a half decent continuation/homage to the originals. It felt like an old school Police Squad/Naked Gun flick, honestly. Liam Neeson is pretty good at comedy ever since he got full blown AIDS. Pam Anderson, for being what - 60? looks half decent. Almost like how Priscilla Presley looked good for her age in the originals. Plenty of throwbacks/references to the originals but also not Star Wars level "eh? Eh!!? Remember this??" type stuff. Most of the comedy is faithful to the original except for one lame Austin Powers-esque sequence with a guy looking through binoculars and seeing something due to the angle. It was just 'as funny' as it was in Austin Powers, that is to say it was a lame joke.

Other than that, even the credits contain several jokes in them like the originals and Liam Neeson sings a song during the credits. He's no Leslie Nielsen, of course, but he did a decent job at it. Did it have to be made? No, it didnt. But it wasn't groan worthy like most modern remakes/sequels.

 

[terry.330]

So my brother in law passed away a few months ago and my sister gave me a set of the Harmy Despecialized Star Wars trilogy on Blu-ray. Apparently he ordered them and never even got around to opening them. None of their kids wanted them so they went to me. He was the guy that got me into cult movies at a young age as well as punk and other alternative music, so big thanks to him.

Anyways I watched Star Wars tonight and after the credits rolled there was a second set specifically for the people that contributed to the Harmy restoration. Much to my surprise I saw this:

 

[lithy]

Can only imagine how Stinky feels about Watto.

 

[Tarma]

The Soldier - Action thriller from James Glickenhaus, starring Ken "Wiseguy" Wahl, with a decent supporting performance from Steve James and a random cameo from Klaus Kinski.

The way the story is told is very uneven, and some of the cutaways during the action sequences (to mask that the guy on screen is a stuntman and not the actor) a rather obvious and a bit naff. Some bits seem crowbar'd in, and the ending is rather anti-climatic.

The soundtrack is by Tangerine Dream, but they must have done this in their lunch break, as it's rather unremarkable, especially compared with the OSTs they did for the likes of Sorcerer, Thief, and The Keep.

 

[HornheaDD]

Descendent:

Think Fire in the Sky, but lamer.

Ross Marquand (in the only visual role Ive ever seen him in) plays a soon-to-be dad with apparent childhood trauma (that is not even referenced until the sorta-climax), works a dead end job as a security guard at a school, and I guess also does handyman stuff here and there for the same place. He sees a light in the sky, thinks nothing of it. Later he goes by his work after hours to fix a screwy light bulb. Light in the sky shows up again, smash cut to a few different blurry/absrtact scenes of "alien stuff and his dead dad' - then cut to him coming out of a 2 day coma.

His life unravels at this point. He can hear conversations from far away as if they are on an AM radio (what) and all of a sudden he can draw like a champ and keeps drawing random scenes/people, evidently from his childhood. Was he abducted? Is he going nuts? Do we care?

He gets asked by the wife to leave because he's more and more unstable. A shrink he sees convinces him to read more into his drawrings and "Follow them back." He ends up at his childhood home with his dad sitting out back, that doesn't recognize him. They have a weird conversation, guy bids farewell to his dad, and he hears a gunshot.

Smash cut to back at his work where he's puking up his lungs and a random dude shows up in a truck, crosses his name off a list that is next to a bunch lat/long coords along with a ton of other names. Random dude tells him "wow you're pretty strong to survive reentry so quick. They were rooting around your mind for a while and you took it well."

Guy goes home, no time has passed, his wife is asleep, he snuggles up to her, kisses her, and the movie ends.

I honestly don't even know why I downloaded it or when. It was just in my plex library and I was off today so I figured why not.

0.3/100

 

[HornheaDD]

Friendship

Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd in a black(ish) comedy. It was and wasn't what I expected at the same time. Robinson's comedy hits me in the funny bone pretty consistently, but it felt like his goofy cringey character's mannerisms (which are a staple of what he does) didn't really fit.

Like it tried to be part Detroiters, and part, I dunno... dark thriller? It wasn't bad and I'd def say check it out if you like any of Robinson's stuff, but it was a little different than his usual fare.

Good to see Jon Glaser in a bit part. That guy churches up anything he's in even if he's just a background character.

 

[terry.330]

My Name is Bruce- Cheapo comedy starring Bruce Campbell as himself, well a parody of himself. Idiots in a small town awaken the vengeful ghost of the Chinese god of war after desecrating the graves of Chinese railroad workers. They hire Campbell to come and fight the ghost, for some reason. It’s all kind of weird and nonsensical.

Campbell basically plays the version of Ash we‘d see on Ash vs Evil Dead more than himself. A drunken sleazy womanizing buffoon. He does a good enough job but the movie is too goofy and dumb for its own good.

I saw this years ago when it initially released and remember being kind of disappointed. I still felt mostly the same this time around. I get that it’s a purposefully bad movie but it’s not really funny enough to make up for its shortcomings.

Still worth a watch if you’re a Campbell fan.


The Clovehitch Killer- A kid in a super Christian family discovers that his seemingly perfect dad is a serial killer. Something along the lines of if Ned Flanders was BTK. I had heard this was pretty good and it didn’t disappoint.

More of a psychological thriller and investigative mystery than horror. The performances were all solid and Dylan McDermott was thoroughly creepy as the dad. There’s definitely some social commentary about the hypocrisy of hardcore Christians but the story is compelling enough that it never gets bogged down by it. The movie is very tense but also has a real sense of denial and desperation that give it additional depth.

It also doesn’t resort to some cheap twist ending or other lame gimmicks. Though I did find the ending a little underwhelming.

Recommended.

 

[Tarma]

Safehouse - middling action thriller starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds.

Denzel is just going through the motions in this one, a slightly watered down version of his Equalizer character; and Reynolds isn't given enough banter to ever form a meaningful relationship with Denzel. It's all rather perfunctory, and the supporting cast of Vera Farmiga, Ruben Blades, Robert Patrick and Sam Shepard are all wasted.

It's not a bad film, just slightly above average due to the leads, but it could have been better in the hands of a more experienced director.

 

[Tarma]

Safehouse - middling action thriller starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds.

Denzel is just going through the motions in this one, a slightly watered down version of his Equalizer character; and Reynolds isn't given enough banter to ever form a meaningful relationship with Denzel. It's all rather perfunctory, and the supporting cast of Vera Farmiga, Ruben Blades, Robert Patrick and Sam Shepard are all wasted.

It's not a bad film, just slightly above average due to the leads, but it could have been better in the hands of a more experienced director.

 

[Tarma]

multi-post

 

[Tarma]

multi-post

 

[HornheaDD]

 

[fake]

Posession

Holy shit this one’s wild. A guy comes back from a spy mission and finds his wife has become a fucking nut. Her cheating is the least of her secrets she’s been keeping from him. The performances are off the wall, but in a good way. This is definitely one of the most exposed nerve divorce stories I’ve seen. There’s a lot of subliminal stuff going on, too. Basically my favorite horror formula.

 

[terry.330]

Finished up the OG Star Wars trilogy. It’s probably been at least a decade since I had seen these, back when I still had the LDs. I’m not going to bother reviewing the movies for obvious reasons. The one big takeaway I had was that pre Episodes 1-3 and especially pre Disney was such a simpler time. No need to explain every stupid little detail and turn everything into an interconnected universe. You could just enjoy the trilogy without a bunch of bullshit. Sure if you wanted to you could get into the expanded universe with the books and stuff but most people never bothered. Just a good old fashioned adventure with likable characters, cool tech and a little bit of eastern mysticism thrown in.

Simpler times indeed.

I also want to mention how well a lot of the effects hold up, especially in ESB and ROTJ. Sure there’s the occasional bad compositing shot here and there but man some of those dog fighting and space battle shots still look amazing and are incredibly well edited.

 

[Tarma]

The Rundown - first proper top-billed action film for Dwayne "The Eyebrow" Johnson, with support from Seann William-Scott and Christopher Walken.

While the overall premise isn't particularly original, the movie is competently executed by director Peter Berg, and it moves along at a good pace. Walken doesn't get a whole lot to do, but he commands every scene he's in, and there's a good chemistry between Johnson and William-Scott. The action is solid, and it's a decent sit back and switch your brain off for a few hours flick.

 

[Taiso]

The wife and I enjoyed The Rundown when it first came out. Fun movie.

 

[HornheaDD]

Sketch

A "family friendly horror" movie. More of a kids comedy type thing, but basically a kid discovers that the pond in the woods behind their house heals him when he cuts his hand, and repairs his iphone's cracked screen.

His mom was cremated so he gets a great idea of putting her ashes in there to see if it will bring her back, but his little sister who is evidently dealing with the trauma of her mom's death by drawing dark stuff in her notebook follows him and her sketchbook ends up falling into the water.

The next day the town is attacked by sketched monsters/animals that came to life. Basically imagine the "Mahoy Manoy" pencil episode of Spongebob come to life. Pretty funny, with a third kid in the mix who reminds me a lot of my nephew and he's got a bunch of great lines in the movie.

 

[Ralfakick]

John Wick Ballerina

It was all right a little by the numbers very much like all of the other ones. I did like Keanu being part of the story. Angelica Houston was fun in it.

Ana De Armas is hot but I liked her better in No Time To Die and think she would be great for a James Bond Spinoff.

 

[terry.330]

The Killer- John Woo’s breakout dramatic action masterpiece. It also established Chow Yun Fat as a badass for the ages. While I like this and Hard Boiled about the same this is better story wise. Hard Boiled definitely one ups it with the action but it feels a little bloated at times.

Definitely looking forward to the 4k release of this and Woo’s other HK films that are coming stateside soon.

 

[terry.330]

Friendship- It was pretty much exactly what I was expecting and that’s okay. It definitely had its moments. The trip scene in Subway was great.

 

[Ralfakick]

Just saw the new Toxic Avenger unrated at the newly remodeled theater with big lazy boy chairs with swivel trays for obese fucks. 6.5/7 out of 10. Peter Dinklage pisses in his own face. Worth a watch.
EDIT: should have also mentioned the only people in the theater were fat 45-50 year old dudes in bad band t-shirts, about 6 goth chicks in skirts and fishnets i would have dicked down, and a few queers. I would have sent the They/Them roster including the 6’3” man in a skirt wearing cat ears Fami’s way to share the love.

I saw it last night and there were two 45-50 year old dudes besides us and two older 55-65 year old straight couples, one of which looked out of place.

I like schlock and it was fun enough but most of the gore I saw was already in the red band trailer. I thought Dinklage was good and Elijah Wood was a hoot in his role.

 

[famicommander]

The assbutts (Skydance) that bought Paramount are reportedly putting together a bit for all of Warner Bros Discovery.

WBD had been planning to split into two companies (dumping all their profitable shit into the WB side and their archaic shit like the cable TV channels into the Discovery side) to make it more appealing to buyers, but Paramount is apparently okay with taking the whole thing anyway.

 

[famicommander]

Was excited for this one because I was a fan of Christy Martin as a fighter, but this trailer doesn't really inspire confidence:

 

[100proof]

Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors - Caught the new 4k master at the Alamo. It's my understanding that a lot of people have turned on this movie over the years but I still think it's the best Elm Street sequel. There's certainly some goofy 80s shit in it (the hair and clothes mostly with the occasional Dokken) and the idea of "dream powers" was always kind of stupid but it's a tight 90 minutes with very little filler and has some great kills, fun effects (that Freddy snake is nightmare fuel for kids of a certain age) and a way better cast than these movies generally get (catching Larry Fishburne and Patricia Arquette before they hit it big). It also catches Freddy when he was firmly in the zeitgeist but hadn't become an embarrassing parody of himself yet.

At the end of the day, it's still a silly 80s slasher movie but considering what came after this one (and where the other franchises were at this point), totally solid entry.

Edit: I had forgotten how bad Heather Langenkamp was in this. I always thought she was perfectly fine in the original and New Nightmare but she just seems so awkward and unsure of how to play her role.

 

[terry.330]

It's my understanding that a lot of people have turned on this movie over the years but I still think it's the best Elm Street sequel.

Really? It seems more like the opposite to me. I see more people who used to dismiss it as just another sequel coming around to it in the last decade or so.