Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[Ag3ma]

John Wick Chapter 4 (2023)

Remember the days when John Wick was just a badass local hitman recently retired from a mid-range Russian mafia outfit? I do. Somewhere along the line, John Wick became an ultra badass best assassin in the world, where assassins are run by some weird council of ultra-rich implicitly centuries old, with rules from the medieval era. Was this an improvement? I struggle to really think so. Anyway, John Wick is apparently still trying to get out of the game... by killing lots of people.

This movie is 2h 40m long. Let that sink into your head. Given the plot and character development is a little superfluous, 2h 40m is far too many fight scenes. In fact, the entire first tranche of the film (Osaka) plays effectively no useful role whatsoever. It could have all been cut out, the film would have lost nothing, and you'd have had less worrying whether you'd need to go to the toilet halfway through and squirming restlessly in your chair (assuming you're in a cinema).

It's very pretty and clearly more expensive than its forebears. The fight scenes are mostly well set-up, proper set pieces in suitably pretty locations. I would perhaps fault it a little (especially in the Osaka sequence) for moments where the hero is fighting multiple opponents, and one stuntman is very obviously playing for time (clearing his head, groping for a weapon) waiting for Wick to deal with his colleague so they can do their bit again. One of the kind of problems with ramping up the ante is also that it requires a lot more suspension of disbelief. I think it's fair to say that after his trip to Paris in this film, John Wick will have single-handed reduced violent crime in the French capital by about 90%. And not a policeman in sight - even as this occurs around top Parisian tourist sites. Nor were the police in evidence during a mass fight in an Osaka hotel with a lot of dozens of combatants, or a fight in Berlin club, where the dancing clubbers seemed to watch a few dozen guys being shot, stabbed, hacked up and generally maimed and killed with mild curiosity, vague irritation or bored disinterest. (Was that Scott Adkins in a fatsuit?) And whilst I can just about buy John Wick having a Kevlar suit soaking up bullets, I can't really get behind the number of times he's hit by a car or falling three stories onto a van and not being crippled by broken bones.

So, well, this is not a bad film. It's got the core John Wick of showy fights as a big plus, but the now trompe l'oeil plot and setting, and the appallingly excessive, flabby length don't really do it any favours. Please, please please film-makers, start thinking about 90-100 minute movies again: taut and efficient.

 

[thebobmaster]

Watched Young Frankenstein with a couple of friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. Yeah, that movie still holds up. Great comedic acting from Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, and Peter Boyle especially, but what really makes the film work is the love you can tell that Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks had for the source material they were parodying. They included enough nods to the original while telling their own jokes that it is a true satire/parody, not just low-brow mockery. Still one of my favorite, if not my actual favorite, Mel Brooks films.

 

[BrawlMan]

(Was that Scott Adkins in a fatsuit?)

Yes.

This movie is 2h 40m long. Let that sink into your head. Given the plot and character development is a little superfluous, 2h 40m is far too many fight scenes. In fact, the entire first tranche of the film (Osaka) plays effectively no useful role whatsoever. It could have all been cut out, the film would have lost nothing, and you'd have had less worrying whether you'd need to go to the toilet halfway through and squirming restlessly in your chair (assuming you're in a cinema).

This is what's holding me back from seeing it in theaters. I got stuff going on right now, and even at an early showing, I feel my time is better spent elsewhere. None of the positive reviews mentions this. Not even the ones who mildly complained about the film being near 3 hours. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Ag3ma]

Yes.

He seems to have had a lot of fun: it's really hammy, scenery chewing stuff, and works very well in a cartoonish way as part of the lighter relief.

 

[Hawki]

Dungeons and Dragons: Honour among Thieves - 9/10

A very solid ensemble piece with the right actors in the right roles (pun intended) that moves at a breezy pace and doesn’t over complicate matters by dwelling on (much of) the lore. I think my only complaint is I wasn’t a fan of the effect they chose for the halflings but given how well everything else was put together it might just have been the most effective measure they could do.

Now as Vox Machina and any amount of anecdotes from players and DMs alike will tell you, DnD lives and dies on its player characters and thankfully everyone in ‘the party’ is a fucking delight and fans of all stripes will find at least one of them to latch on to. I recommend the movie heartily.

So in other words, they (critical) hit it out of the park?

 

[BrawlMan]

He seems to have had a lot of fun: it's really hammy, scenery chewing stuff, and works very well in a cartoonish way as part of the lighter relief.

Speaking of Adkins, I'm watching The Accident Man 2 later today.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Bacurau (2019)

Brazilian movie about a small rural community threatened by a ruthless group of American mercenaries, lead by Udo Kier.

I... didn't really get anything out of this one. It's not that the premise couldn't have made for a fun action movie, or a tense thriller, or even an effective satire if handled correctly, but instead it tries to be a bit of all of those, and doesn't succeed very well at either. If I had to describe Bacurau in a single word it would be "rudimentary". None of its individual elements are executed well enough to really work.

There are moments when Bacurau makes an attempt to channel Quentin Tarantino's blend of vulgarity and social commentary, or John Carpenter's skill for creating tension or the raw grit of a Sergio Leone western, but all of those feel out of Bacurau's reach. It's not like the potential for a good movie wasn't there, but the characterizations are just too flat, the pacing too lifeless and the core conflict too underexplored for it to live up to it.

Bacurau spends a lot of time presenting scenes that should flesh out the people of the eponymous village and the sinister foreign operatives threatening them, but never really manage to give either of them that spark of humanity that someone like Tarantino manages to infuse into even his most exaggerated characters. So when it sputter along to its lukewarm western movie climax, I just wasn't engaged with anything that was happening.

Despite a variety of visual and directorial quirks, Bacurau lacks a memorable personality on its own. During some of the earlier parts, it actually had me guessing where it was going, and I halfway expected some eventual descent into absurdity but what I got was way less interesting. I've seen a few comparisons with Jordan Peele's movies, and honestly, I have some of the same issues with those. They are movies I spend waiting for the other show to drop and to actually elevate their premise, but that moment just never comes and you're just stuck with a premise that plays out on a surprisingly predictable way.

I know it's a harsh thing to say, but this just wasn't working for me. Bacurau just never earned my engagement, and honestly, that's not really all that hard to do. It has little in the way of memorable characters, or performances, or scenes, or shots... I get what it's going for, but I don't think it was even an especially good version of what it's trying to be.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Bacurau (2019)

Brazilian movie about a small rural community threatened by a ruthless group of American mercenaries, lead by Udo Kier.

Udo Kier will be 80 next year, seems a bit old for non-vampire action murder roles.

(Ok, 4 years ago he was almost 5 years younger, but still)

 

[Ag3ma]

Speaking of Adkins, I'm watching The Accident Man 2 later today.

Saw it on my last international flight - it's pretty good for the territory. Haven't seen the original though.

 

[BrawlMan]

Haven't seen the original though.

Please see it as soon as you can. It's free on Tubi. I am not sure if the that streaming service is available in your area.

 

[BrawlMan]

Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday - Great sequel to an already great action film. Definitely easier to digest than a 3 hour John Wick movie. See it, provided you have seen the original as well. What love about these duo of films are the big focus of 1-on-1 (sometimes 2-on-1) fights. There are pretty much no jobber fights here, nor an endless parade of mooks to be shot up or beat up. All the fights are straight boss rushes. These are boss rush movies and are awesome.

​

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

There's Someone Inside Your House

From the director of the Creep movies. Now the Creep movies are terrifying found footage about people answering Craiglist ads and spending the day with someone who may be, at best, clinically insane; at worst a serial killer. But after Creep 2 somebody told him they liked his movies for their social satire, so he made Corporate Animals, an aggressively unfunny office politics comedy about team-building gone wrong after a cave-in. And here he's made the (deceptively) titled There's Someone Inside Your House, a sort of Gen Z Scream where the killer - rarely inside your or anybody's house, but whatever - targets high school kids with secrets that go viral after he kills them while wearing 3D replicas of their faces.

Problem one is that the movie wastes way too much time building up a fakeout killer (it's always the kid who looks like a high school shooter). Problem two is that it's also obvious who the real killer is, just by looking at our protagonist group. Two Black girls, a Latino, a they/them, a gay and a straight white blonde rich as fuck nepobaby. What a puzzle.

The killer's MO makes no sense either. The victims start off being abusive jocks and white supremacists, with their record of hatred going viral as soon as they get killed. Fair enough. But then the killer starts targeting people for no good reason (what's so terrible about a secret addiction to painkillers, or having accidentally hurt someone?) or no reason at all (the guy stabbed at the school had no secrets, and nothing was divulged after the incident). So the social justice angle drops dead halfway through the movie and instead we're treated to some bullshit election year cockamamie plot involving private security and cheap land like anybody would care.

In summary, Bodies Bodies Bodies is the better/funnier Gen Z slasher satire and got absolutely nothing from this except some Twin Peaks trivia.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Suckerpunch

Getting to the bottom of my DVD collection, and watched this for the second time, having seen it once after getting the DVD cheap some years back. I remember there being a lively internet discussion on whether it was a subversive feminist masterpiece, or really, really not (it's really obviously not).

Forgotten how painfully boring it is. Take away the gratuitous sleaze and Snyder has some good use of colour and that's it. There's nothing else to the film.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Fun / Great

Really fun movie. I've never played D&D, so not sure how closely it adheres to the spirit of the game, but man, this film was entertaining. At first, the constant MCU-esque snark was kinda grating, but when I realized that's what the movie was going for without being attached to a half dozen other movies I've not seen, it grew on me. I'm really glad I got the membership to Cinemark; going to the movies is fun again!

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Company of Wolves (1984)

Dark fantasy styled reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, directed by Neil Jordan. Jordan's most popular movie is probably his adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, Company of Wolves however serves as an even better display of his fascination with the psychosexual subtext of gothic horror. Co-written by and loosely based on a short story of feminist writer and poet Angela Carter, Company of Wolves is a surrealist exploration of sexual awakening and gender dynamics through the tale of Little Red Riding Hood and various folkloric werewolf myths.

It's one of those creative endeavours that seem so overly specific in their vision and so uncompromisingly committed to it, that it's harder to imagine them being made as it is to imagine them emerging fully formed from some primordial pool of raw cinema. It's certainly of a kind with some of the hazier, dreamier productions of post 50's European arthouse, though moreso the kind you'd associate with continental european cinema, rather than a british film. Bringing to mind the nested storytelling of Wojech Has' Saragossa Manuscript, the coming of age themes and imagery of Jaromil Jires' Valeria and he Week of Wonders and to an extent even the formalistic, high artifice reimagining of gothic horror from Dario Argento's Suspiria, Company of Wolves is nevertheless a very unique and very british movie.

Delving into the dreams of a teenage girl in what is briefly introduced in the beginning as the modern day English countryside, young Rosaleen imagines herself as a peasant girl in a medieval village threatened by wolves. The story consists to about equal parts of her experiences in that environment as they loosely follow the famous fairy tale and of cryptic fables, mostly told to her by her vaguely witch like grandmother (a very memorable performance by a pre Murder She Wrote Angela Lansbury), all of them revolving around wolves and men, and the thin line seperating them.

Company of Wolves has all the traits of the recently popularized archetype of the "80's Dark Fantasy" movie. Those tactile studio sets and practical effects and elaborate animatronics that define classics of the genre like Legend or Labyrinth. Its creative, and rather fleshy, werewolf transformation sequences adding a note of surprisingly effective body horror to something that's otherwise simultaneously morbid and rather whimsical in that distinctively British way.

It's a movie with very specific sensibilities, appealing to a very specific taste. It's kind of artsy, and kind of campy, and kind of goth and kind of horny. An overwhelming barrage of unpredictable imagery and dialogue and plot developments and digressions that make its 95 minutes runtime feel nearly twice as long. If what it does doesn't work for you, there's a good chance you might find it insufferable. However, if it does work for you, it's kinda amazing. And it did work for me. Very rarely do you see a movie commiting to its themes and aesthetics quite this hard and with quite this much enthusiasm.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Nil By Mouth - (Prime, Purchase)
The first and last film directed Gary Oldman, set in south London pre-90s, somewhat based on his own and sister's - Laila Morse, who just so happens to be cast here, and is Mo from EastEnders? - childhood. Kathy Burke and Ray Winstone are the main couple in bad relationship, involving cycles of abuse and addiction. Is kinda just a slice of life type film, but was a bit close to home with own vague childhood memories (without the heroin at least, I think) where certain phrases and patterns of behaviour are a lil too convincing, got very tense indeed. Appreciate the (Scouse?) mullet dude having his own mysterious moment too. Not sure who it can be recommended to tho, is too conflicting of interests, cannot speak from a neutral viewpoint honestly with this one. Perhaps if authenticity is desired, then it does an alright job, with superb performances. But don't go in expecting a fun time.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Three Thousand Years of Longing

Tilda Swinton accidentally releases a genie from a bottle (Idris Elba in pointy years), proceeds to interrogate him in her hotel room about how he ended up there. It's Arabian Nights with a djinn for a storyteller, with stories that go as far back as Solomon and Sheba. I guess the stories are all themed around self-destructive, all-consuming longing (for power, knowledge, love, etc), with the djinn as a hapless bystander. He also grants Tilda the requisite three wishes, although those are not really the point of the movie. She's much more interested in hearing out the djinn and dissecting the whole situation - as you do, right? Every story about wishes is a cautionary story, as she points out.

I really liked the movie, "fantasy romance magic realism" et al. It looks stark and colorful, has some beautifully composed images (as far as CGI goes) and for a movie mostly about two people talking in a hotel room it's generally pretty wild and unpredictable (and violent, and graphic). Too bad it didn't do better.

 

[Absent]

Company of Wolves (1984)

Dark fantasy styled reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, directed by Neil Jordan. Jordan's most popular movie is probably his adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, Company of Wolves however serves as an even better display of his fascination with the psychosexual subtext of gothic horror. Co-written by and loosely based on a short story of feminist writer and poet Angela Carter, Company of Wolves is a surrealist exploration of sexual awakening and gender dynamics through the tale of Little Red Riding Hood and various folkloric werewolf myths.

It's one of those creative endeavours that seem so overly specific in their vision and so uncompromisingly committed to it, that it's harder to imagine them being made as it is to imagine them emerging fully formed from some primordial pool of raw cinema. It's certainly of a kind with some of the hazier, dreamier productions of post 50's European arthouse, though moreso the kind you'd associate with continental european cinema, rather than a british film. Bringing to mind the nested storytelling of Wojech Has' Saragossa Manuscript, the coming of age themes and imagery of Jaromil Jires' Valeria and he Week of Wonders and to an extent even the formalistic, high artifice reimagining of gothic horror from Dario Argento's Suspiria, Company of Wolves is nevertheless a very unique and very british movie.

Delving into the dreams of a teenage girl in what is briefly introduced in the beginning as the modern day English countryside, young Rosaleen imagines herself as a peasant girl in a medieval village threatened by wolves. The story consists to about equal parts of her experiences in that environment as they loosely follow the famous fairy tale and of cryptic fables, mostly told to her by her vaguely witch like grandmother (a very memorable performance by a pre Murder She Wrote Angela Lansbury), all of them revolving around wolves and men, and the thin line seperating them.

Company of Wolves has all the traits of the recently popularized archetype of the "80's Dark Fantasy" movie. Those tactile studio sets and practical effects and elaborate animatronics that define classics of the genre like Legend or Labyrinth. Its creative, and rather fleshy, werewolf transformation sequences adding a note of surprisingly effective body horror to something that's otherwise simultaneously morbid and rather whimsical in that distinctively British way.

It's a movie with very specific sensibilities, appealing to a very specific taste. It's kind of artsy, and kind of campy, and kind of goth and kind of horny. An overwhelming barrage of unpredictable imagery and dialogue and plot developments and digressions that make its 95 minutes runtime feel nearly twice as long. If what it does doesn't work for you, there's a good chance you might find it insufferable. However, if it does work for you, it's kinda amazing. And it did work for me. Very rarely do you see a movie commiting to its themes and aesthetics quite this hard and with quite this much enthusiasm.

Also, i don't think you mentionned it, one of the best soundtrack in the history of cinema.

I adore that film.

 

[Hawki]

The Portable Door (6/10)

This was a weird one. It's an adaptation of the first J.W. Wells & Co. book series - a series I'd never heard of until now, and having seen the film, I'm not really in a rush to.

That's a bit harsh. Anyway, Paul Carpenter, a twenty-something loser gets hired by the afforementioned company, whose business is to make certain events happen - right people, right time, leading to stuff like people falling in love, siblings reuniting, etc. They work with goblins, who roam London's underground. How this is all paid for is never really explained, and similarly, Paul's colleague, Sophie, is a bit of an enigma as well. She clearly knew all about this magic stuff before joining the company, but her backstory is never elaborated on. Regardless, Paul has a magical knack to finding things, and the CEO wants him to find the titular portable door. However, not everything is right, and Paul and Sophie find themselves in the midst of a conspiracy.

Overall, this film is just plain average. It has some quirky ideas, Sam Neil is overacting and having a blast, and the film kept me guessing througout as to who was villain and who was foe (so to speak), but on the other, none of it really 'wowed' me. It really doesn't help that the PaulxSophie thing is your bog standard movie romance and doesn't lead to much, and that it feels like the film is cribbing off previous successful IPs, from Harry Potter to The Matrix. There's some excellent shots/set design, but apart from that, it's really your standard urban fantasy film.

 

[meiam]

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Fun / Great

Really fun movie. I've never played D&D, so not sure how closely it adheres to the spirit of the game, but man, this film was entertaining. At first, the constant MCU-esque snark was kinda grating, but when I realized that's what the movie was going for without being attached to a half dozen other movies I've not seen, it grew on me. I'm really glad I got the membership to Cinemark; going to the movies is fun again!

If you've never played DnD its easy to miss, but the constant snark is very much on point for a DnD campaign, its really hard to keep those serious and the flow of a campaign (people occasionally messing up stuff they should be really good at while at other time getting success they really shouldn't be able to get) lend itself naturally to this kind of humor.