Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★★ review of Jacob's Ladder (1990)

“Mr. Singer. What an appropriate name for a man who can't keep his mouth shut.” This film had a bit of a lengthy gestation period. First conceived in 1980, screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin was inspired both by a nightmare he had about being trapped in a New York subway, as well as an interpretation...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★★ review of Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

“I'm a Catholic whore, currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. So, hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon, madam.” This film, an adaptation of a comic book series by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, came about when Millar...

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[BrawlMan]

G20 - Amanda Waller vs. Homelander. I love it. Better than the entire Has Fallen Trilogy. Another better Die Hard than Die Hard 5.

 

[Bartholen]

Went and saw Sinners for a second time. There's so much foreshadowing and theme to pick up on a second watch.

Spoiler: Spoilers

The standout moment for me was when towards the end Remmick is about to kill Sammy, and the vampire chorus starts reciting the Lord's prayer in unison. It's the moment where the movie's themes of monocultures and the erasure and co-opting of identity culminate. How interesting that the vampires who pose themselves as the ultimate underdogs and a true counter to greater cultures end up reciting the single most important prayer of the greatest monoculture in history: christianity. You can also read the movie as a larger screed about the US identity in general: Remmick asks if for one night they can all be family when he first tries to enter, but his words are hollow. He can only introduce new members to his family by erasing their identity and individuality and making them part of a homogenous whole. There is no shared history, no love, no community save for that which is forced on his victims.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

It's basically The Raid meets Run All Night.

 

[BrawlMan]

View attachment 13202

I also just finished watching Mother's Day (2023) on Netflix. It's Taken done by the Polish. Pretty great and better than the entire Taken Trilogy, but most films are. I do love how they filmed the action with the chaotic, but smooth camera movements that are easy to follow.

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[thebobmaster]

A ★ review of Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996)

"Let that be a lesson to ya, lad. Always wear a prophylactic!" No production notes on this one, so I'll just get right to it. This plot puts Leppy boy, now named Lubdan (Warwick Davis), in space. This time, he is planning to marry an alien princess named Zarina (Rebekah Carlton) for the sake of...

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[Gordon_4]

The Eternals - 9(7)/10

This movie is at times beautiful and moving, and others its broken and frustrating and lacking. But damn if I don't love it. And I really, really want at least Arishem's story wrapped up. Call me shallow but the giant space god who's bigger than planet Earth itself fascinates me when he says he's going to review what the Sersi and the others did and come back to render judgement.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Sinner

Yay I saw the hot new movie in the theater (not IMAX, they didn't have that option in my area in a convenient time/place).

Well it's certainly very good. All in all it's such a profoundly charming cast and engaging direction that all of the stuff you might be hearing about the themes and cultural touchpoints were, to me, icing on the cake.

Michael B Jordan plays twins and the two gangster brothers have opposite but complimentary personalities so you only know who is who (one is the hard-headed scowling tough guy, the other the smiling glad-handing smooth-talking charmer). Hailie Steinfield carries a lot of weight as both the only significant white character and one of two main women and she does a lot of well time scenery chewing. The rest of the cast is very good and it's one of those movies that's just full of fun characters.

It's the kind of film that gives you both NPR/NAACP approved cultural education and cheap entertainment thrills, so fun for the whole family (if gore and copious cunnilingus references are acceptable to your family).

As someone who spent a lot of time reading about and listening to the music it's always a bit of whiplash to see how filmmakers represent it. I had mixed feelings about how completely over the top it took things, like about blues music's reputation and connection with "sin" and demonology. It's fun, of course- like a comic book. But I also feel wary about that sort of thing as it makes legacy music feel foreign to people.

But once you accept the comic book of it all, it's certainly a good time.

Much has been made of the themes and IMO the commentary is a bit overblown. Like- "the vampires are actually capitalism" or whatever which... ok, a bit, but I don't think the film is making the clear theses some folks think it is, I think it's more collage-like.
I also had mixed feelings about how it incorporated "white" folk music (Irish/Scottish derived ballads and social music from and around the southeast rural Appalachia) in contrast to blues, a subject passionately debated and represented in various contexts to this day.

If you know anything else about this movie you know there is a post-credits scene and I just wanna call out that is stars the blues guitarist/singer Buddy Guy who is 90 freaking years old and that alone is a treat.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Heart Eyes.

What can I say; it was the latest Netflix slasher flick in the vein of so many others before it, and that’s about it. Not too terrible and not too good either. My initial IMDb guess was .1 off from where it currently sits, which makes sense because it has its silly/gory/funny moments these things rely on, but I wouldn’t say the repeated viewing factor is up there with the best of them. Unless people are big fans of Vday, and have worn out both versions of My Bloody Valentine.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★ review of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

“A man cannot destroy the savage in him by denying its impulses. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” As a quite old film, to say the least, there isn't a lot about the production I can find. However, when one of the actresses in the movie, Nita Naldi, died in 1961, her...

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[thebobmaster]

A ★★★½ review of The Abyss (1989)

“ We all see what we want to see... Coffey looks and he sees Russians, he sees hate and fear. Bud, you have to look with better eyes than that.” It just wouldn't be a James Cameron movie without some production issues, but even by his standards, this was a hell of a production. He had been...

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[Bob_McMillan]

Thunderbolts*, or as the kids call it, New Avengers

I wanted to love it, but just kinda liked it. Florence Pugh puts on a great performance, which unfortunately highlights how pretty much every other member of the team is left behind the dust. Ava/Ghost may as well not even be in this movie. Bucky as well.

 

[Gordon_4]

Thunderbolts*, or as the kids call it, New Avengers

I wanted to love it, but just kinda liked it. Florence Pugh puts on a great performance, which unfortunately highlights how pretty much every other member of the team is left behind the dust. Ava/Ghost may as well not even be in this movie. Bucky as well.

There was meant to be an additional subplot with Taskmaster and Ghost, but they cut Taskmaster in subsequent script rewrites. I presume this is because Olga Kurlyenko costs more money than the others.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

There was meant to be an additional subplot with Taskmaster and Ghost, but they cut Taskmaster in subsequent script rewrites. I presume this is because Olga Kurlyenko costs more money than the others.

I heard it was slimmed down considerably during editing. Both Ghost and Bucky had actual emotional moments apparently. Shame, I didn't think it would have added too much time.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Thunderbolts*, or as the kids call it, New Avengers

I wanted to love it, but just kinda liked it. Florence Pugh puts on a great performance, which unfortunately highlights how pretty much every other member of the team is left behind the dust. Ava/Ghost may as well not even be in this movie. Bucky as well.

A friend was just telling me yesterday, one of the reasons the Winter Soldier is hardly in the movie is because the creator has a contract for royalties and it has to do with the amount of time the Winter Soldier is in the movie so if he's in there for less than X amount of minutes, they don't have to pay the creator. Hence, why the creator of Winter Soldier is not credited in Thunderbolts in the credits.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Drop - 5/10

It's a movie about a woman going on a first date and someone in the restaurant sending her "drop" messages that she can't block and forcing her to do things while her kid and sister are basically being held hostage by a home invader. It's one of those movies that takes places in basically one place like Phone Booth, the recent Carry-On, or even Die Hard to an extent where the main character just has to work with where they are and what they got, improvise and whatnot. The movie is just very average across the board, it's slightly dumber and more unrealistic (in parts) than I would like from this type of movie.

Death of a Unicorn - 3/10

Suppose to be a black comedy but it's not very funny. It stars Jenna Ortego and Paul Rudd as father/daughter going to Rudd's rich boss's house for work purposes. It has some decent gore scenes and some funny moments but not that's about it. One of the characters takes unicorn horn dust as drugs in every way possible because, apparently that's hilarious, it's not, but that's the type of movie this is. Everyone plays the character archetypes that you'd expect them to be. Jenna's character, of course, is all about protecting the unicorns but in a bad way because she's like you can't do XYZ to the unicorns but doesn't ever explain herself even though she sorta does the research. I'm not one to really criticize CGI but the CGI unicorns are just fucking awful, they even change color from white to grey to white from scene to scene to scene. The climax of the movie takes place at night and Jenna gets pushed out the house and the next time we see her, she's outside and it's the freaking afternoon, not like say dawn or something. It feels like there was someone different writing, directing, and editing this movie in like 20 minute chunks because there's no consistency.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Speak No Evil

Does anybody remember Kalifornia (1993)? David Duchovny and his wife (a Demi Moore type, but not Demi) go on a cross country true crime road trip and decide to split the gas with a young, attractive but sketchy couple played by Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis. Duchovny's wife finds them uncouth and barely tolerates them, but Duchovny is smitten by Pitt's wild alpha maleness and slowly sides with him over his battleaxe wife. Throughout the trip there's a lot of awkwardness as the milder couple try to politely accomodate the other two and do some self-actualization, ignoring they're hanging out with criminals.

So this is that, with James McAvoy in the rowdy alpha lout role and Scoot McNairy in the emasculated beta position (his wife cheated on him AND SHE SAID SHE WAS SORRY GTFOI). McAvoy embraces his Russell Crowe/Gerard Butler era as a boorish, abrasive hick who makes things uncomfortable for the guests at his country home as he gets increasingly violent and inappropriate over the weekend.

Remade from a Danish movie that had a more depressing ending, because of course.

 

[Agema]

I presume this is because Olga Kurlyenko costs more money than the others.

About 10-15 years ago she might have done.

 

[Gordon_4]

About 10-15 years ago she might have done.

Well since money factored into the screen time afforded to Sebastian Stan, I came to the conclusion it probably also had something to do with her. Which is a pity but what can you do.