Saw a clip of this movie once, and didn't want any of that shit.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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Yeah, miss me with that shit. The reputation alone makes me give the film the widest berth possible.
The US government investigated whether they killed some of the cast for real. As a publicity stunt that they suckered people in the US into, but still.
Tonight's new film was Dagon, a 2001 adaptation of both the titular story and Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft, done by the same man who adapted Lovecraft's Re-Animator. Honestly, that one is definitely the better movie, but Dagon was still mostly enjoyable. The real drag on it was that the main character is...not easy to root for, between the whining tone of his line deliveries and his tendency to talk about how every event had "two possibilities", which got old fast. Other than that, though, there were some decently done suspense scenes, very effective practical effects (and delightfully dodgy CGI), and the fact that it ended as happily as most Lovecraft stories made it stick out a bit more. Not a bad watch if you are in the mood for some eldritch fun.
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Yeah but I find it odd how such adaptations tend to sexualize the source material in some sort of gigerian eros-thanatos tension, while Lovecraft stories themselves feel a bit asexual (unless you count one implied ritual rape as a monster origin, but it's played more for the abomination than for some anime sleaze). This additional aspect, and also the film's humour, felt tacked on and unlovecraftian.
Due to having stuff later tonight, decided to watch my new movie of the day early. And when I say "new", it's the opposite of that, as my new movie is the oldest movie I've watched by far, 1902's A Trip to the Moon. I can't really comment on the acting, as there weren't even subtitle cards in this one. I can say that it was absolutely fascinating seeing what the filmmakers thought might be on the moon back then, and watching the film after the characters landed on the moon made me wonder if the filmmakers did all of the drugs, or if they saved some for the rest of us.
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For all my contempt for tiktok (and such networks), there's one strongly endearing aspect of it : seeing so many creative amateurs reinvent and explore visual trickery with the kind of palpable glee that I expected to be lost forever past the era of Meliès and George Albert Smith.
Inventing cinema's first visual effects, thinking up new ways to create illusions through this new tool, must have been thrilling beyond comparison.
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And twice is the only way to live.
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Guardians galaxy 3. Bad. That joke about the team member who is irritatingly dumb but is here because he's the boss' nephew or something? It's that movie. The racoon in a coma for 9/10th of the movie feels like one of these late starsky and hutch seasons where they tried to be dramatic by always having one of them alternately wounded or in prison or sick or something. The movie finds itself so terribly cool, and keeps hammering the "how cool I am" with lines about how cool that scene was or with epic music on epic slo-mo (sometimes the characters themselves go oh no my friend is dying let me put this upbeat song on we go on a fun adventure). It's the cheapest kind of scifi with the cheapest scifi conveniences (blindly jumping on a giant spaceship to land on a door luckily placed there, blindly landing a spaceship on the very spot of the planet where the friends needed it, etc). It's full of disney-level heavy-handed sentimentalism (the cringe of a group of friends repeating to each others "it is good to have good friends'). And a noah's animals rescue where none of them insta-devour each others. It's just dumb all around, very artificial, trying too much and failing too hard on every aspect, including humour. But oh how proud it seemed to be of itself all the long.
I didn't expect much, yet I did expect better. And I had a bit more respect for the two earlier movies. This one felt... insulting. Like the authors wrote stuff that wouldn't work on themselves, but that they'd expect to work on (their idea of) the public.
I didn't expect much, yet I did expect better. And I had a bit more respect for the two earlier movies. This one felt... insulting. Like the authors wrote stuff that wouldn't work on themselves, but that they'd expect to work on (their idea of) the public.
Scared the daylights out of my mom and her brother when they were kids when it released in theaters. Had some nice touches back in the day.
when they open a door and the thing is just on the other side and swings and smashes splinters from the door frame.
I did just watch the Thing 2011 on Peacock. Not sure what to give it. B- ? It gets a lot of hate, I think as it suffers in comparison to Carpenters classic (derided by critics when it came out!) but it is NOT a bad time for horror lovers! Some genuinely awesome stuff in it!
love when they're carrying a guy that can't walk and his arms split off as 2 seperate things!
El Vasco
Corny melo about a young Basque man who leaves the motherland (he just got his heart broken, plus he's tired of the weather) for some godforsaken shithole in the middle of rural Argentina on the promise of board and work from a distant relative. It all turns out to be bullshit and he's stuck there until the next flight home, which happens to be within a week. Is that enough time for him to get over the culture clash, gain newfound appreciation for his own, nurse his heartbreak, fall in love with the local manic pixie dream girl and pull the whole town into an elaborate Good Bye, Lenin! ruse so old senile grandma can die happy thinking she's back home? Credits roll at the hundred minute mark.
Corny melo about a young Basque man who leaves the motherland (he just got his heart broken, plus he's tired of the weather) for some godforsaken shithole in the middle of rural Argentina on the promise of board and work from a distant relative. It all turns out to be bullshit and he's stuck there until the next flight home, which happens to be within a week. Is that enough time for him to get over the culture clash, gain newfound appreciation for his own, nurse his heartbreak, fall in love with the local manic pixie dream girl and pull the whole town into an elaborate Good Bye, Lenin! ruse so old senile grandma can die happy thinking she's back home? Credits roll at the hundred minute mark.
Dunno if that's what they thought would be on the moon, or if it was an excuse to put some cool weird stuff on the screen. But they put some cool weird stuff on the screen.
All Quiet on the Western Front: Netflix
Deviates from the book in some places but the futility of war, its waste and inhumanity are all on display in this moving and captivating adaptation of the 1929 book. The actors comes across as spot on for their respective characters.
single craziest scene?
Haunting score to the movie as well.
A-
Deviates from the book in some places but the futility of war, its waste and inhumanity are all on display in this moving and captivating adaptation of the 1929 book. The actors comes across as spot on for their respective characters.
single craziest scene?
The Germans make a charge and do pretty well. Then French tanks drive them away, only to be followed by the enemy using flame throwers on them, only to be followed by airplanes dropping bombs on them. I watched slack jawed imagining how such characters would have felt.
Haunting score to the movie as well.
A-
Today's new film for me was Lake Mungo. This is the kind of movie that benefits from going into it as blind as possible, so all I'll say is this. If you enjoy documentary/found footage style horror, watch it. If you are on the fence, this film may well convince you that it can be done extremely well.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Wes Anderson's second movie this year, a 40 minute (practically stage play) adaptation of the Roald Dahl story, which I'm pretty sure is read in its entirety by the monologuing actors in Anderson's very typical meta deadpan. It's actually quite nice and engaging. Good actors (Fiennes, Cumberbatch, Kingsley, Patel, Ayoade), not a word or movement wasted, and the pacing is relentless. I half expected a nasty ending from all those adult Dahl stories I've read but it actually ends on a quite lovely note.
Wes Anderson's second movie this year, a 40 minute (practically stage play) adaptation of the Roald Dahl story, which I'm pretty sure is read in its entirety by the monologuing actors in Anderson's very typical meta deadpan. It's actually quite nice and engaging. Good actors (Fiennes, Cumberbatch, Kingsley, Patel, Ayoade), not a word or movement wasted, and the pacing is relentless. I half expected a nasty ending from all those adult Dahl stories I've read but it actually ends on a quite lovely note.
The Northman. I watched this, thinking it was a film I'd heard people raving about, but now I think maybe that was a different film. This is an okay film I suppose, but it didn't do a lot for me. My take-home message is that vikings are bad, and Dave from accounting should stop pretending he is one.
I watched The Creator yesterday, and I really did not like this one.
I thought that it was derivative, predictable, full of idiotic characters making stupid decisions, and full of plot conveniences. I didn't care for the action, and I didn't buy into the character relationships. A real stinker that had my eyes rolling every other scene.
I also felt like the film completely failed to flesh out the world in any meaningful way, whilst also showing off stuff that made zero sense in the context of its own world. An example of the former would be how robots, eat, drink, and watch robot pornography, but it is never really explain why they do any of that, even if it is just because they can. And an example of the latter would be why would the West bother with running humanoid kamikaze drones, when they already have a massive omnipresent space station that can bomb anything, anywhere, with extreme precision?
I would say that I wasn't expecting the film to turn the Americans into the antagonists of this movie, and I thought that was quite brave, but I wish there was actually some subtlety to it. I knew exactly where the film would be going after the first 15 minutes when a US soldier literally threatened to kill a little girl's dog if no one told him where the macguffin was, and when another US soldier encountered a door locked by facial recognition and gleefully cut a dead civilian's face off (off-screen), showing us exactly what we could expect from the American faction, despite the film still trying to pretend like they were still going to be the good guys for a decent chunk of the movie.
But just thinking about the plot after the fact, and it very much felt like a combination of Rogue One x Avatar, but worse than both.
I thought that it was derivative, predictable, full of idiotic characters making stupid decisions, and full of plot conveniences. I didn't care for the action, and I didn't buy into the character relationships. A real stinker that had my eyes rolling every other scene.
I also felt like the film completely failed to flesh out the world in any meaningful way, whilst also showing off stuff that made zero sense in the context of its own world. An example of the former would be how robots, eat, drink, and watch robot pornography, but it is never really explain why they do any of that, even if it is just because they can. And an example of the latter would be why would the West bother with running humanoid kamikaze drones, when they already have a massive omnipresent space station that can bomb anything, anywhere, with extreme precision?
I would say that I wasn't expecting the film to turn the Americans into the antagonists of this movie, and I thought that was quite brave, but I wish there was actually some subtlety to it. I knew exactly where the film would be going after the first 15 minutes when a US soldier literally threatened to kill a little girl's dog if no one told him where the macguffin was, and when another US soldier encountered a door locked by facial recognition and gleefully cut a dead civilian's face off (off-screen), showing us exactly what we could expect from the American faction, despite the film still trying to pretend like they were still going to be the good guys for a decent chunk of the movie.
But just thinking about the plot after the fact, and it very much felt like a combination of Rogue One x Avatar, but worse than both.
Ah, damn it. The trailers for this one really intrigued me and I was looking forward to seeing it. If nothing else the aesthetic is still cool.
Terrifier, 3/10, a piece of crap
Having experienced something of a gorehound awakening in recent years and seeing the sequel to this get some buzz last year, I bought the 2-pack for these movies for like 5 bucks. Terrifier is a deliberate throwback to the early days of 80s slasher movies where a group of women get terrorized and brutalized by a sadistic killer. And turns out this is the bad kind of throwback, the one where you go "thank god we've moved past this". This feels like a movie from a bygone age, the kind which you find in the discount bin of the video rental store to watch when you're too young, and just fast forwarding to the juicy bits. Because jesus, this movie is a fucking snooze. And its monumentally bog-standard premise of consisting mostly of women getting brutalized just feels nasty and retrograde in this day and age. I'm not even gonna let it have the zero-budget defense (this was made for only $35,000), because there are films with matching budgets that look way better, have way better acting, writing, pacing and everything. I fast forwarded through what felt like half of this movie, and missed nothing.
The overexposed lighting makes it look super cheap and shitty, even while the movie itself is somewhat decently shot and the dilapidated building it takes place in has some atmosphere to it. The acting is basically porn quality. They do basically every crappy slasher cliché played completely straight, which is just fucking stupid. This was made in 2016, that kind of shit doesn't fly anymore! Most of the movie is spent watching tissue thin characters slowly skulking around samey environments with zero tension, atmosphere or stakes. It's only a little over 80 minutes long, and there's probably 10, at best 15 minutes of entertainment to be had in it.
How's the gore then? Pretty good to be honest, the practical effects look quite good and it's nice and juicy. But there's so little of it in the runtime that there is no way I could in good conscience recommend this on that alone. The only redeeming thing about this movie is the star of the show, Art the Clown, who's played by a real life mime. He's the entire conceit this movie rests on, and though he by no means saves this dreck, he is so good in the role that any time he's on screen the film's score jumps by like 5 points. He has zero spoken dialogue, and in fact doesn't make any sort of sounds at all in the movie. So he's essentially acting as if he's in a silent movie, and he's just magnificent. He conveys tons of personality and presence through physicality and expression alone, and manages to thread the needle between genuinely terrifying and darkly funny, between inhuman monster and being weirdly vulnerable. He is a superstar, and it's such a shame he's in such a piece of trash.
So yeah, a 9/10 performance in a 2/10 movie. Skip this and just watch a compilation of Art's scenes on Youtube or something.
Having experienced something of a gorehound awakening in recent years and seeing the sequel to this get some buzz last year, I bought the 2-pack for these movies for like 5 bucks. Terrifier is a deliberate throwback to the early days of 80s slasher movies where a group of women get terrorized and brutalized by a sadistic killer. And turns out this is the bad kind of throwback, the one where you go "thank god we've moved past this". This feels like a movie from a bygone age, the kind which you find in the discount bin of the video rental store to watch when you're too young, and just fast forwarding to the juicy bits. Because jesus, this movie is a fucking snooze. And its monumentally bog-standard premise of consisting mostly of women getting brutalized just feels nasty and retrograde in this day and age. I'm not even gonna let it have the zero-budget defense (this was made for only $35,000), because there are films with matching budgets that look way better, have way better acting, writing, pacing and everything. I fast forwarded through what felt like half of this movie, and missed nothing.
The overexposed lighting makes it look super cheap and shitty, even while the movie itself is somewhat decently shot and the dilapidated building it takes place in has some atmosphere to it. The acting is basically porn quality. They do basically every crappy slasher cliché played completely straight, which is just fucking stupid. This was made in 2016, that kind of shit doesn't fly anymore! Most of the movie is spent watching tissue thin characters slowly skulking around samey environments with zero tension, atmosphere or stakes. It's only a little over 80 minutes long, and there's probably 10, at best 15 minutes of entertainment to be had in it.
How's the gore then? Pretty good to be honest, the practical effects look quite good and it's nice and juicy. But there's so little of it in the runtime that there is no way I could in good conscience recommend this on that alone. The only redeeming thing about this movie is the star of the show, Art the Clown, who's played by a real life mime. He's the entire conceit this movie rests on, and though he by no means saves this dreck, he is so good in the role that any time he's on screen the film's score jumps by like 5 points. He has zero spoken dialogue, and in fact doesn't make any sort of sounds at all in the movie. So he's essentially acting as if he's in a silent movie, and he's just magnificent. He conveys tons of personality and presence through physicality and expression alone, and manages to thread the needle between genuinely terrifying and darkly funny, between inhuman monster and being weirdly vulnerable. He is a superstar, and it's such a shame he's in such a piece of trash.
So yeah, a 9/10 performance in a 2/10 movie. Skip this and just watch a compilation of Art's scenes on Youtube or something.
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And twice is the only way to live.
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The Widow Couderc. Because I love Granier-Deferre, and I could spend hours and hours listening to his interviews without tiring.
It's not a very eventful movie. More like a description of french rural society (and society at large) during the 30s. With, as everywhere in Europe, the rampant racism and antisemitism that would cristalize in Germany, as the ordinary everyday nazis (as the very fine people who'd elect the rightmost political option within the current overton window) were everywhere. Fascism was rising there as it does today, with the same smug semi-respectability.
That's one aspect of the background. The other is just petty rural family infighting. The plot is simply about a young escapee (Delon) finding shelter in the house of an old widow (Signoret), and how their relationships evolve. It's implied that the widower used to sleep with her very old father in law, before that younger man's arrival. The latter does sleep with her and somehow loves her, but (because it's a french film of the 60s), he also has an affair with a teenager who herself has a fatherless baby and an easy reputation. There's a couple scenes between Delon's character and that teeaeger, which are supposed to be tender and erotic. Were they at the time ? They just feel creepy and pedophiliac nowadays, strongly unerotic. It's a cultural shift that concerns a lot of movies of that era.
So, barely any character is truly likeable. Delon's character isn't, due to this affair. The teenage girl isn't (she's showed being gratuitously, childishly cruel to a rabbit). Signoret's titular character is the most dignified, yet still pathetic. The rest of the family is just awful - greedy, heartless, violent, manipulative, and of course avid readers of L'Action Française (one of the journals which, at the time, had the same function and the same kind of headlines as today's Fox News) - and way more nasty than the Delon/Signoret couple, which leads the spectator to root for those two. But the gloomy tone makes us expect the inevitable tragedy.
At the basis, it's a Simenon novel, so you can expect a psychological focus on characters, interactions and old unresolved conflicts. I haven't read any Simenon ever, but from the adaptations, I always prefer his bleak little stories that stand on their own legs to those that require the pretext of a Maigret whodunit - because yes, those are always a pretext for what Simenon is best known for, the depiction of lost everyday people, in everyday ordinary drama pushed to tragic conclusions. But for Maigret fans, this would feel like revealed character backgrounds without the police investigation framing.
Anyway, eerie atmosphere. Pessimistic outlook on people (but the authors and the spectators know how History would soon justify it). Very humane character studies, top notch acting. A decent Sarde soundtrack (that irritates me by sounding too close to another music I can't identify). All that for a very basic story that simply carries you. But again, a movie from a different era, both in form and content. Nice, but not quite the strength of other Granier-Deferre like Le Train ou L'Ami de Vincent.
Looking forward to resuming the exploration of his work.
It's not a very eventful movie. More like a description of french rural society (and society at large) during the 30s. With, as everywhere in Europe, the rampant racism and antisemitism that would cristalize in Germany, as the ordinary everyday nazis (as the very fine people who'd elect the rightmost political option within the current overton window) were everywhere. Fascism was rising there as it does today, with the same smug semi-respectability.
That's one aspect of the background. The other is just petty rural family infighting. The plot is simply about a young escapee (Delon) finding shelter in the house of an old widow (Signoret), and how their relationships evolve. It's implied that the widower used to sleep with her very old father in law, before that younger man's arrival. The latter does sleep with her and somehow loves her, but (because it's a french film of the 60s), he also has an affair with a teenager who herself has a fatherless baby and an easy reputation. There's a couple scenes between Delon's character and that teeaeger, which are supposed to be tender and erotic. Were they at the time ? They just feel creepy and pedophiliac nowadays, strongly unerotic. It's a cultural shift that concerns a lot of movies of that era.
So, barely any character is truly likeable. Delon's character isn't, due to this affair. The teenage girl isn't (she's showed being gratuitously, childishly cruel to a rabbit). Signoret's titular character is the most dignified, yet still pathetic. The rest of the family is just awful - greedy, heartless, violent, manipulative, and of course avid readers of L'Action Française (one of the journals which, at the time, had the same function and the same kind of headlines as today's Fox News) - and way more nasty than the Delon/Signoret couple, which leads the spectator to root for those two. But the gloomy tone makes us expect the inevitable tragedy.
At the basis, it's a Simenon novel, so you can expect a psychological focus on characters, interactions and old unresolved conflicts. I haven't read any Simenon ever, but from the adaptations, I always prefer his bleak little stories that stand on their own legs to those that require the pretext of a Maigret whodunit - because yes, those are always a pretext for what Simenon is best known for, the depiction of lost everyday people, in everyday ordinary drama pushed to tragic conclusions. But for Maigret fans, this would feel like revealed character backgrounds without the police investigation framing.
Anyway, eerie atmosphere. Pessimistic outlook on people (but the authors and the spectators know how History would soon justify it). Very humane character studies, top notch acting. A decent Sarde soundtrack (that irritates me by sounding too close to another music I can't identify). All that for a very basic story that simply carries you. But again, a movie from a different era, both in form and content. Nice, but not quite the strength of other Granier-Deferre like Le Train ou L'Ami de Vincent.
Looking forward to resuming the exploration of his work.