Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[BrawlMan]

Revenge of the Ninja - The best of the Ninja Trilogy from Cannon. Enter the Ninja is fine action wise, but the characters are boring, and Ninja III I have yet to see at all. Though Sho Kosugi is more of a supporting character, and the main characters aren't interesting. So I am not in a rush to buy or watch.

What else can I say? It's one of the best ninja films from the 80s. Near non-stop action and a cool final fight. Amazing how nearly everyone did their own stunts and fights. Some are life threatening stunts you can't get away with in today's age. If you can only pick one movie from the trilogy, watch this movie.

Pray for Death - This is the second ninja film Sho Kosugi starred in, after leaving Cannon Films. It almost feels like a bigger budget version of Revenge of the Ninja, but no ninja on ninja action. Also,the near entire family does not die. Instead the wife dies only, but she does get raped. Yeah, it gets that dark and exploitative. Makes you really hate the main villain. It's an action revenge movie that becomes ninja vs. gangsters. The action is good and suspenseful. Surprisingly, the main villain puts up a great fight during the end, and makes Sho work for it. Had this been a Seagal movie, the villain would not have gotten a lick in, and would have died a lame death.

Another thing I want to add is I got the Blu Ray version from Arrow Videos. It's great and clear transfer, with its only flaws being when the film inserts missing or footage that was originally deleted, these scenes get dark or super dark. How and why they did not bother transferring these missing shots properly nor take the time is beyond me. It does not happen too often, but it is noticeable in the final few action scenes.

 

[evilneko]

So the last live action film I watched was a movie from 2010 called Contagion.

Yeah, you can guess what it's about. I swear it was written by a time traveler, or someone who spoke to one. Well, except for the fact that in the film, the US has a...semi-competent government. Had I watched it a decade ago, I would've found the whole thing just too hard to swallow. After the last few years, yeah, hits all too close to home. The fictional virus has an R0 around the same as Alpha-variant Sars-Cov-2 but a much higher mortality rate, more than double Covid's (although in the film, everyone they showed actually getting it...died, so yeah). Fortunately for that fictional world, their vaccine came even faster. And yeah. There were antivaxxers.

It was an... interesting watch.

 

[meiam]

Revenge of the Ninja - The best of the Ninja Trilogy from Cannon. Enter the Ninja is fine action wise, but the characters are boring, and Ninja III I have yet to see at all. Though Sho Kosugi is more of a supporting character, and the main characters aren't interesting. So I am not in a rush to buy or watch.

What else can I say? It's one of the best ninja films from the 80s. Near non-stop action and a cool final fight. Amazing how nearly everyone did their own stunts and fights, are some life threatening stunts you can't get away with in today's age. If you can only pick one movie from the trilogy, watch this movie.

Really revenge is better than Ninja 3, where *look at note* a yoga instructor get possessed by a dead ninja?! Cannon was such a weird company...

 

[BrawlMan]

Cannon was such a weird company...

Yes, but it's why people love the former company and how they stood out. It was not always for the best, but it usually worked. Sucks that Cannon could not financially keep it together. In a weird way, Blum House has become the Cannon films of the 2010s and beyond.

 

[Dalisclock]

Encanto.

Watched this with the family last night now that it's on streaming. Enjoyed it well enough, though the average adult is gonna figure out the ending a long way off. The production numbers and songs are the highlight here and I wasn't shocked to learn Lin Manuel Miranda did at least some of the songs because a couple of the songs have a Hamilton vibe to them(notably "Surface Pressure").

One thing that caught my attention is that the movie might be a very broad adaptation of (or at least inspired by) "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez due to the focus on a single special family in a small isolated Colombian town and the magical realism elements they both share. Of course, it would have to be loose because One hundred years of solitude is not a kids story by any means while Encanto definitely aims at the younger crowd.

 

[Ezekiel]

Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

Ridiculously pretty, without feeling visually fake. Was constantly impressed by the photography. Wanted a little more from the story, but the performances, maturity and look of it more than make up for it. I'm not saying the story wasn't good. The relationship did interest me. It's about a fashion designer who is too fussy and has too much a temper for his muse, who loves him. I haven't watched many PTA movies, but I thought this was one of his better ones. Actually, I've watched too few.

 

[Baffle]

Cosmos. It's played straight more or less all the way though until the end, when it gets oddly slapstick.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Little Women (2019)

Ho boy... now in fairness to the latest adaptation, I grew up having watched the 1994 film, so I'm clearly biased. That said, I really question the casting choices in a lot of cases (Timothee Chalamet as Laurie was fine, though, if a bit odd) particularly the sisters themselves, which isn't a great start (they're all "actresses", sure, but none of them are American and bloody hell do Watson and Ronan's accents slip a lot). Florence Pugh (with her figure and voice) as young Amy as well was... well, a choice (I've seen the TVTropes 'fridge' explanation for it and I don't... really... buy it), she made a fair fist of it, though. Now for the clearly biased opinion: Emma Watson is not suited for the role of Meg, not compared to Trini Alvarado. I had such a hard time believing she might be any of the others' elder sister.

 

[Bartholen]

So the last live action film I watched was a movie from 2010 called Contagion.

Yeah, you can guess what it's about. I swear it was written by a time traveler, or someone who spoke to one. Well, except for the fact that in the film, the US has a...semi-competent government. Had I watched it a decade ago, I would've found the whole thing just too hard to swallow. After the last few years, yeah, hits all too close to home. The fictional virus has an R0 around the same as Alpha-variant Sars-Cov-2 but a much higher mortality rate, more than double Covid's (although in the film, everyone they showed actually getting it...died, so yeah). Fortunately for that fictional world, their vaccine came even faster. And yeah. There were antivaxxers.

It was an... interesting watch.

I watched this during Covid as well, and oh boy the first half is rough to watch. When it started going into "downfall of society" mode with mass graves, rampant robberies, random violence etc. it actually became easier to watch, because at least then it was firmly in the realm of fiction, and not indistinguishable from any news broadcast. I genuinely think that film should be shown in schools, because it does such a good job of conveying the importance of hygiene and how easily diseases spread.

 

[Agema]

Don't Look Up (2021)

Satirical comedy and allegory for climate change starring Leonardo di Caprio, Jennifer Lawrence and a load of what amount to cameos. And of course heavily based on traditional disaster movies: scientists realise there's a problem, the politicians don't listen, cue disater. It's not bad, some of the stuff is funny (if also a little too obvious). It is however between 30 and 60 minutes too long: comedy is hard to sustain, and here as is often the case, the joke runs thin after a while.

 

[gorfias]

The Unforgivable on Netflix.

One to miss. Melodramatic, long drawn out shots. Boring performances. D.

 

[Agema]

The Unforgivable on Netflix.

One to miss. Melodramatic, long drawn out shots. Boring performances. D.

My wife watched it; I gave it a pass. She said it was pretty rubbish.

 

[Piscian]

Don't Look Up
On Netflix with the folks. I thought it was really good if pretty depressing. Your enjoyment I think is highly dependent on your political leaning. I didn't have any familiarity with the allegory of our political responses to Climate Change. My parents who are pretty alt-left were already familiar with the writer of the film who is a journalist and knew what the allegory was going in. To be honest the film plays out almost beat for beat the US response to covid so both me and my brother assumed it was covid. I mean quite literally many scenes are copy/pasta of dumb shit the US white house administration said and did. In an interview the writer commented that covid did end up being serendipitous but did not go as far as to admit it affected the course of the production. I'll say from my perspective Imagine if Covid were a big comet headed towards earth and then you pretty much know everything that happens in this movie, the final result being both hilarious and yet very very bleak and depressing. thats where the leaning comes in. Imagine how Trump would have responded to some scientists storming into the whitehouse to warn him of a big comet. One will say "whelp hed act like a fucking idiot." and another side will say "hed reveal he was superman all along and take care of it.". Only one of those two perspectives will enjoy this film. Though I'm speaking strictly American audiences. Other than the Brits I'm not sure anyone else will get the majority of the references.

 

[BrawlMan]

Gundala - An Indonesian martial-arts superhero movie. It's like this cross of Batman Begins (though not that grounded) and the MCU. Compared to the former, score sounds very similar to Hans Zimmer's score. The movie is well shot and the lighting is really good. The night scenes have this gold/yellow lighting to it. The actions are great. Not to the level of The Raid or Headshot, but they are glorious. Even though this a superhero movie, I would put this in the PG-13 category. The film is is not rated, but I would describe this as an R-Rated movie, and there are some dark moments. The movie is a solid 2 hours and is an origin story. It moves surprisingly quick, but I think they could have cut down a little. At least it was not like Batman Begins when Nolan spent too long on the origin. I highly recommend this movie.

The movie is based off an old Indonesian comic from the 1960s. They're also planning a cinematic universe and making at least 7 of these

....How?

From what I've heard, the movie did well in its home country, so sequels are going to happen. But do they really need 6 more of these? The only way I can think of, is if the movies focus on the other characters aside from Gundala.

​

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Being The Ricardos

Biopic about a made-up week in the life of Lucille Ball in which she: battled CBS about incorporating her real life pregnancy into I Love Lucy, stifled Walter Winchell and the tabloid press about her being a big ole commie, came to a hurl with her hubbie/co-star Desi about his philandering (couple divorced years later though) and wrangled the production of her show at its peak. It's a movie so whatever, you fuck around with the real timeline for the sake of drama. But by the end I'm not sure what the focal point of the story was supposed to be.

Aaron Sorkin writes/directs, so naturally he makes Lucille and everybody else into quick-witted, fast-talking geniuses having five conversations at the same time, butting heads with The Man (whoever has to play The Man in any given scene) and making their problems into Society's problems. Sorkin could make a story about some guy who doesn't have any milk to add to his cereal into a topical, socially aware and terribly urgent commentary on society.

Nicole Kidman looks weird and uncanny as Lucille. She nails the voice and what little we see of her as the character in "I Love Lucy". I would've gone with someone younger, closer to Lucille's actual age ca. early 1950s, and able to emote past the botox or prosthetics or whatever's going on there. And I would've liked to see her do more slapstick. It was Lucille Ball's thing and there's almost none of it here. Imagine a Fred Astaire biopic with 15 seconds of tap dancing in it.

(You know what, Kristen Wiig should've played the part)

 

[Dalisclock]

Rare Exports (2010) 8/10

This is a little known, finnish fairytale/horror/thriller/black comedy about some locals in Lapland who start experiencing the effects of excavations in the nearby mountain who are looking for Santa Claus. It's a bit hard to explain to outsiders because 1. there's a prevalent mystery element as to what the plot exactly entails and 2. it relies a fair bit on knowing the cultural context around finnish Christmas folklore (like Santa Claus being not from the North Pole, but from Korvatunturi), which I'm not sure translates very well to international audiences.

It's legitimately great. It's one of those movies that feels way longer than it is in a good way, because so much happens and every scene is meaningful. It's not even 80 minutes long, yet it feels like 2, again, in a good way. The acting is great even from the child leads (though again, I'm not sure how well it translates), there's a really good dramatic element between the main character and his father and there's a lot of character that's conveyed via showing and not telling. It's beautifully shot, genuinely tense and has a really sweet ending. There's also some absolutely pitch-black cynical humor thrown in I'm pretty sure won't even register as humor to international audiences. It also earns its R-rating with tons of swearing, quite graphic content and some disturbing imagery, and a ton of male nudity at the end (you'll have to see it yourself to find out how that comes into play). One of the things I appreciated the most is how the patently ludicrous premise is played completely straight, allowing the characters and situations feel entirely real without Marvel-esque winking at the camera. It also helps with the humor, because every so often you'll go "Wait a minute, this is absurd", like when the protagonists are wheeling a santa creature in a cage to be presented to a businessman. The juxtaposition between the ridiculousness of the situation and the completely earnest acting is what makes it funny.

Whatever criticisms I have will be mostly missed by non-finnish speaking audiences. Sometimes the script gets a bit too sweary for its own good, and in certain scenes it feels like the acting is maybe a touch more intense than it needs to be. There's also some pretty glaring inaccuracies when it comes to the dialects the characters speak, but that's about as small potatoes as you can get. I would recommend everyone see it who wants to see a massively edgier, darker Christmas movie that'll still get you in the spirit, but I'm pretty sure this movie is buried under a rock in a volcano on the ocean floor when it comes to actually trying to find it. All I can say is y'all are missing out.

I saw the movie a couple years ago knowing nothing about it but enjoyed it nonetheless. It was weird but in a good way and not knowing the Finnish take on Santa maybe made it more surreal and stand out.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

-Don't Look Up
It was an OK satire, it's not near the level of good South Park satire. I kinda felt most of it was really easy shots that really didn't have much weight to them. And this movie is way too fucking long. There were a few good lines in the movie like the following line from Jonah Hills character:

There's three types of American people. There are you, the working class. Us, the cool rich, and then them. *crowd boos* I'm sorry, but we need them. We need them because you build us up to fight them.

Now that's a pretty insightful line. I wish the movie had a lot more of that.

Also, why the fuck did that general change them for free snacks?!

-Ocean's Eleven
I realized I didn't own this on blu-ray and bought it the other week. This is such a good heist movie, the screenplay is so well written and sets up everything so perfectly. Even the last lines of the movie was set up earlier in the movie. The cast is so perfect as well.

-Die Hard
Christmas tradition obviously. And, of course, it holds up damn near perfect. Alan Rickman is just so fucking good in it.

 

[Bartholen]

Spider-Man: No Way Home, 9/10

Almost missed my screening of this due to train relays. Thank fuck I didn't because theaters in my country are closing tomorrow for a few weeks, and I have zero doubts I'd have been spoiled to hell and back about this in the interim. Because this is one of those unfortunate movies where a single headline, thumbnail or even part of a video title can spoil its greatest surprises, and I strongly recommend everyone see this knowing as little as possible, because this movie legitimately took me by surprise.

The non-spoiler things I can talk about are:

• It's among the greatest Spider-Man films, up there with Spider-verse, and among the top 5 MCU movies as well
• Superhero movies don't often make an impression with their acting, but Tom Holland is doing a fantastic job here, and the movie is genuinely touching
• Whereas the two previous movies may have felt like they rely a bit too much on the MCU connections, this feels like a Spider-Man film through and through
• If you have childhood nostalgia for the Raimi films like I do, this film will grow your heart by two sizes
• the plot is nowhere near as predictable as you might assume from the trailers
• the action scenes are fantastic

Spoiler: Onto spoilers now, last chance to turn back

It's just fucking wild that just a few years ago Spiderverse was considered a really out there, "the MCU would never do this" type of movie, yet here we are doing basically the same thing in likely the biggest movie of the year. Not that it feels like a copy of Spiderverse, but the comparisons are unavoidable. Spiderverse goes way crazier with the concept, but here the restraint is entirely justified, considering THE MADLADS DID IT THEY BROUGHT TOBEY AND ANDREW BACK!!! I was already enjoying Dafoe and Molina tremendously, but when those big eyes on the spider-suit could be seen on the alley I gasped audibly in the theater. It was such a magnificent moment I thanked the stars I could catch this movie early. And best of all, it didn't feel like fan wankery or an orgy of references. They were faithful to the respective versions of the character, the chemistry between the spidermen was just *chef's kiss*, and they got some really fun and funny moments out of it.

This is nostalgia bait done right. When Doc Ock burst onto the scene, I felt a rush of joy I wasn't expecting. I'd seen the first trailer, but seeing Molina act at length the exact way he did over a decade and a half ago in this new setting made me remember just how wonderful the Raimi films were. And then we got Dafoe, and the brief rehash of the "talking to the helmet" scene made me feel the exact same thing all over again. The fact that they made Green Goblin the main antagonist was the absolute perfect choice, Dafoe is just that fucking good. He brings that exact right blend of camp, genuine terror and thespian sincerity I don't feel has been matched by any other superhero movie villain to this day. I also really enjoyed how they recreated his classic purple hood costume in a natural way. They even managed to sneak in not one, but two meme references in a way where it didn't feel like they were purposely drawing attention to them, and the lines made perfect sense in context.

Judging from what little trailers I'd seen I assumed this would be just a series of boss fights, or the villains teaming up against Spidey. When that didn't happen I legitimately couldn't tell where the plot was going, and it was enthralling. They do mostly a good job of establishing each villain having a different outlook and reaction to being thrust into this new situation, and watching them bounce off each other was really entertaining, because it wasn't the classic clash of personalities you often see when multiple villains are in the same scene. The way they humanize Doc Ock and Osborne manages to retroactively add more depth to characters from nearly 20 years ago, and that's just mind boggling.

It's not perfect though. This is a movie of extreme highs punctuated by fairly middling lows. It's no surprise that the Lizard and Electro are the weak links here. The former feels almost pointless, and for some reason Jamie Foxx seems a bit checked out in his part, even though I know he can be a great actor. The entire reason for why the plot happens is one of those extremely frustrating "character acts irresponsibly for no real reason" type deals. You can pick apart how the movie's ending makes zero fucking sense too, but I'm not one of those people. Occasionally the old Marvel habit of undercutting the dramatic weight of a scene with some quippy banter rears its head, but here it at least makes sense, considering we're dealing with not one, but three protagonists known for throwing quips around.

But my biggest criticism is WHY THE HELL DID WE NOT GET A SCENE WITH TWO J JONAH JAMESONS?!?!??! Seriously, that was the reason I stuck around through the end credits, because it would have been the perfect cherry on top, and a way to both pay homage to the greatest comic book casting ever, as well as get some great acting out of JK Simmons. I was so disappointed when that didn't happen.

 

[Xprimentyl]

-Ocean's Eleven
I realized I didn't own this on blu-ray and bought it the other week. This is such a good heist movie, the screenplay is so well written and sets up everything so perfectly. Even the last lines of the movie was set up earlier in the movie. The cast is so perfect as well.

When I got laid off about 13 years ago, I was stuck at home with full pay and benefits for 2.5 months. Most people would regard that as a pretty sweet "sayonara" package, but it wasn't long before depression set it. I started going to the bar a lot, drinking too much, shooting a LOT of pool, and buying a shit-ton of used DVDs from a used media store a block away from my apartment. I bought Ocean's 11 because I'd never seen it, so fuck it. I watched it once. Then again the next day. Then again the day after that. I watched the movie every, single day for over a month. It was the one thing that was able to drag me out of my funk. The clever writing, the stellar acting, and perfectly cast characters (particularly Rusty and Danny) were just such cinematic magic. It's probably my favorite movie if only because it was the light during a very dark period of my life. I don't watch it "every day" anymore, but I still squeeze it in there several times a year.

 

[Xprimentyl]

The Shack: Really Good / Great

Sam Worthington plays Mack, a man suffering from a traumatic secret from his troubled childhood, trying to lead a normal life of faith with his wife and three children. A sudden tragedy tests the tethers between his family, and most importantly, unveils his disaffectedness at a God he feels abandoned him long ago. An ominous invitation draws him back to the focal point of the aforementioned tragedy, and a turning point where he faces his past.

I think this movie will work best for those with any sort of faith. If you're a staunch "there is no God" atheist, this will probably do little for you, but if you're like myself, someone raised in faith, but has grown more into the middle (agnostic,) it is an extremely powerful film. It asks a lot of the tough questions, and while it doesn't outright answer them, it condescends (for lack of a better term) in obscure but comforting ways, i.e.: they don't answer those questions, but explain your confusion (if that makes any sense.) I was in tears by the end. I recommend it.