Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★ review of White Fang (1991)

"He's Scott's boy. Look at him, huh. How much trouble could he be?" This film, an expansion/adaptation of the novel by Jack London, had one interesting area of production trouble that I'll get into in more detail in the appropriate section. Of all areas of production to have troubles, it was the...

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[Xprimentyl]

The Lady In The Yard: Meh... Alright, I Guess / Great

A woman Ramona) and her two young children are living on a remote farm they've ostensibly only recently moved to. She is physically recovering from a car accident that killed her husband atop the mental strain that trauma has put on her and their kids. One morning as lays in her bed lamenting a over a video of her and her late husband pillow talking about his dreams for the farm, her son lets her know the power is out. As she readies herself to deal with this most recent stress whilst simultaneously trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy, they notice a woman in a long, black gown, faced covered in a black mourning cowl sitting in front of their home. Ramona approaches the woman, assuming her to be lost or stranded, and the brief conversation reveals that the woman is there for a very specific and nefarious purpose.

While most of the movie does some pretty rote scares, i.e.: creeping shadows, spectral entity instantly moving closer or disappearing altogether, the movie really brings it home with its allegorical message about...

SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING BELOW. I put them in here because if anyone else has seen this and has any other interpretations, I'd like to hear them:

... suicide. As far as I can tell, the Lady in the yard is a stand in for the woman's suicidal thoughts, and her sudden physical manifestation meant "today" was the day Ramon had subconsciously decided to kill herself. It get's pretty dark and uncomfortable at the end when the Lady basically says this, and the movie ends with the Lady lovingly stands behind the woman, her hands on the woman's hands, as she "helps" her bring a rifle under her chin. It then tries to sell a warm and fuzzy when the next shot is the Ramona running out of the house, reuniting with her kids, the power coming back on, and life seems to be returning to normal, but the camera pans down to reveal the corner of painting where the artist's signature is backwards, a sign she is not in the same world as before, inferring that she did, in fact, kill herself. Or did I interpret that incorrectly?

It's ultimately very on-the-nose, but somehow manages to be fairly ambiguous, and I can appreciate a movie that makes me think. I'd recommend at least one watch, but with the strict caveat that you should NOT expect a horror movie. It obviously tries to scare constantly, but really doesn't succeed at all in that regard; it works better billed as a cerebral drama.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★★ review of Edward Scissorhands (1990)

“Do you think those scissors are hot or cold? And just think of what one snip could do.” The idea of this film stemmed from a drawing that Tim Burton made as a teenager to reflect his feelings of isolation and inability to communicate with people, represented as a serious man with blades for...

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[Gordon_4]

Bumblebee - 9/10

I gave it a rewatch because I wanted something to cheer me up - been one of those weeks - and you know, this movie really is delightful. Hailee Steinfeld's Charlie is much more pleasant to be around than Shia was in his outings, her relationship with Bumblebee feels like one of equals and friends and I bought their emotional connection. On the other side, Shatter and Dropkick are still two of the best Decepticons we've had in live action ever who use their brains - or at least Dropkick is smart enough to follow Shatter's lead more often than not - and don't start needless fights or problems by just selling the government a decent line of bullshit they don't need to corroborate.

Also while the score is nothing to write home about, the actual soundtrack is pretty good (same with Rise of the Beasts, actually) with some great period appropriate classics but not overly indulgent about it.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Die Another Day suffers a little too much of "this is what we thought was cool at the time", which is not unusual in lesser Bond movies (see early Roger Moore). So Madonna sings the intro song, and it's a good enough Madonna song, but doesn't feel like a Bond song; then there're two surfing scenes too many, and an overuse of that green HUD that was everywhere in the 90s and early 00s whenver someone looked down a scope, and a sword fight that goes on for too long, and Madonna. But it also gets a lot of the fun exactly right. For one, it finally has Brosnan getting under a villain's nerves, which was Connery's strong suit (I think Bond should always be a bit of a troll), and Graves is a fun villain to take the piss of. In the grand realm of "Bond goes rogue/comes back from the cold" narratives, it's vastly more enjoyable than anything Craig ever did. And I happen to like all the gadgets - the more the merrier - and think an ice palace is a cool setting for the third act.

RIP Lee Tamahori

 

[Xprimentyl]

Weapons: Okaaay? / Great

17 elementary school children, all from the same class, simultaneously run off into the night at 2:17am and disappear. Only one child and the [new] teacher from that class remain, so of course the teacher becomes the victim of a literal witch hunt as the townsfolk assume her being the one thing linking the disappearance of their otherwise disparate kids is damning enough to basically harass her into an admission of guilt and revelation of the whereabouts of the children. The teacher attempts to confront the lone child, assuming herself that he must know something about his classmates, finds herself at his front door where things are... not right.

A weird one. I expected horror, and got more of a "cerebral" vibe, which isn't bad necessarily, but I think the combination of a the, well, not "unique," but certainly "unusual" way they chose to tell this story and the fact that it's ultimately very obtuse made it fairly perplexing in the end. I find it hard to have a strong opinion on it. I kinda feel the need to watch it again knowing what I know, but a lot of it is intentionally tacit, so I honestly feel there's not much to have missed. I dunno; someone smarter than me, feel free to clue me in.

I freely admitted in my review of Weapons that I felt I may not have "gotten" it, but after this HIGHLY informative watch... I get it now. Very powerful allegorical storytelling. I think it perhaps subverts itself by being a bit too obtuse with its intended messaging, offering too many avenues to distract and engage the imagination, but this was obviously (well, obviously now) a labor of personal expression, much like music, where the artist's message won't reach everyone, and may easily mean something entirely different to each individual. That said, it hits completely differently when you get the intent.

@hanselthecaretaker2, take a look; maybe your appreciation of the film can change as mine has.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

A House of Dynamite

What if Dr. Strangelove was played seriously and started over every 30 minutes? There you go, that's my review.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I freely admitted in my review of Weapons that I felt I may not have "gotten" it, but after this HIGHLY informative watch... I get it now. Very powerful allegorical storytelling. I think it perhaps subverts itself by being a bit too obtuse with its intended messaging, offering too many avenues to distract and engage the imagination, but this was obviously (well, obviously now) a labor of personal expression, much like music, where the artist's message won't reach everyone, and may easily mean something entirely different to each individual. That said, it hits completely differently when you get the intent.

@hanselthecaretaker2, take a look; maybe your appreciation of the film can change as mine has.

I feel like any good movie should work when just viewed straight (it is what it is essentially) and I feel like Weapons works just fine on that basic level. You can just see the movie as just simply what the plot is said to be and it's highly enjoyable. Same as you can have Cabin in the Woods be literally the first horror movie you've ever seen and it's still very enjoyable. Weapons was pretty obviously about parasitic family members (that aspect was really in your face), the specifics don't matter all that much as it works with alcoholism (as in the video) or bad foster parents (just taking care of kids for the assistance) or a family member that's a child abuser (that is in good graces/sweet talks the parents / other authorities).

 

[Xprimentyl]

I feel like any good movie should work when just viewed straight (it is what it is essentially) and I feel like Weapons works just fine on that basic level. You can just see the movie as just simply what the plot is said to be and it's highly enjoyable. Same as you can have Cabin in the Woods be literally the first horror movie you've ever seen and it's still very enjoyable. Weapons was pretty obviously about parasitic family members (that aspect was really in your face), the specifics don't matter all that much as it works with alcoholism (as in the video) or bad foster parents (just taking care of kids for the assistance) or a family member that's a child abuser (that is in good graces/sweet talks the parents / other authorities).

I don't disagree at all; I thought Weapons was decent-if-ambiguous on my initial watch, but my appreciation grew exponentially after learning the deeper meaning. Before learning what the video offers, I'd have given it a solid 6/10, i.e.: not great, not scary, I've seen worse, and not compelled to recommend or watch it again. But the context, it being about how alcoholism affects people and those around them, and how alcohol becomes like an unwelcomed, long-stay visitor that literally controls and damages the lives of those around it, that just ratcheted it up to maybe 8-9/10, something I WILL watch again, and something I WOULD recommend to others if only to discuss the metaphor.

Now that I think on it, it's not unlike the other "horror" movie I recently watched, The Lady In The Yard, a film billed as horror, fails at it miserably, but is premised allegorically on a much deeper and important subject. I wasn't impressed until it's finally minutes when it wrapped up its message with a very poignant bow. It's fine to like moves for what they are, but when one can be appreciated on deeper levels that engage you intellectually, it's a lovely bonus.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★ review of Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

“Dinosaurs are pretty dumb, right? And yet they survived for 167 million years. And we, Homo Sapiens, geniuses by comparison, only have about 200,000 years so far. But with our huge cranial cavities, they're so smart, we already have the capacity to annihilate ourselves. I doubt we make it to...

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[Bartholen]

Bugonia, 7/10

This is the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos, here collaborating once again with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. The premise is straight out of a stoner comedy: two backwater conspiracist lunatics kidnap a high-powered female executive, thinking she's an alien intent on destroying humanity. Hilarity ensues, right? Well, wrong. The premise may be outlandish and goofy, but the movie itself is more of a thriller than anything, and quite dark, intense and graphic. It digs into a lot of contemporary issues like misinformation, echo chambers, conspiracy theories lending an escape from reality and so on. It's quite harsh, even mean-spirited, and can be a difficult watch.

Discussing what I enjoyed and didn't about this movie unfortunately is hard to discuss without spoilers, so here's the unspoiler-y stuff: the acting is phenomenal, the score is great and very unorthodox for this type of film, the atmosphere's tense, and it feels like the movie has its finger on the pulse of right here and now. Jesse Plemons is undoubtedly the showstealer here, bringing back some of that cold menace he became famous for on Breaking Bad. For most of the movie it's just three people in a house, yet it never felt slow or sluggish, there was a ramp-up in stakes in every scene. There's one particularly harrowing scene that could be straight out of a slasher movie, and one of the nasty ones to boot. Lanthimos definitely knows how to direct gnarly stuff, that's for sure.

Spoiler: Here's where we get to spoilers

Here's my theory on how this film was conceived: Lanthimos, Plemons and Stone (imagined in my head as three stoner roommates) were smoking weed and watching cartoons one night, and Plemons said to Stone: "What if you were like, an alien and I couldn't know it?" Then the three started riffing on the idea and laughing their butts off Beavis and Butthead -style, and decided on the spot to make a movie about it. They wrote down some ideas and the ending, and by the time they sobered up they realized they'd already signed contracts to make a movie. So Lanthimos got to work on the script, and in the process turned it from a bumbling stoner comedy to a dark look at the edges of modern society, but kept the original stoner comedy ending.

And that's what ultimately dragged this movie down for me. See, it turns out in the final minutes of the movie that Stone's character was in fact an Andromedan alien, and Plemons' character had caught on to her. He was right about literally everything, down to the shape of the alien spaceship. Stone's character teleports back to the mothership, and decides that humanity's had its time, and basically instakills every living human on the planet. It is such a jarring, out of nowhere ending that's so completely out of step with how grounded the rest of the film is, that right as I realized it was happening I started going: "Do I kind of hate this? I do kind of hate this don't I? Yeah, I definitely hate this." This isn't presented as a comedy or satire in the vein of Don't Look Up where this kind of thing would fit. The movie's an uncomfortably realistic, downright grueling examination of what happens when someone is no longer tethered to reality, and the damage it can cause. So when the movie decides to switch gears at such a late point, it feels like it actively undermines itself. It's like watching someone give an informative, well presented lecture about the health effects of fast food and the harm it causes, and in their closing statement chow down in a XXXL Bacon Blaster 9000. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, and made the movie feel disingenuous and half-hearted.

To my surprise this movie is actually a remake of a Korean film called Save the Green Planet from 2003. I don't know anything about it, but the poster at least would suggest a much less serious, and more whacky film than Bugonia. It just goes to show that not every director's style is suited for every movie premise.

So yeah, overall enjoyable, but definitely a mixed bag.

 

[BrawlMan]

Predator: Badlands - 10/10, S-Rank movie! See it! This film has no flaws. I do appreciate changing it up big time, and love the fact they adapted from one of the best stories in the Dark Horse Comics line up.

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★★½ review of The Naked Gun (2025)

“Sometimes to get the job done, you have to break the law. I do it all the time.” There had been plans to make a Naked Gun 4, this time direct-to-TV, in 2009, but it fell through for financial reasons. Written by Alan Spencer to keep the studio from doing even worse, the studio ended up first...

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[Bartholen]

Thirst, 9/10

This is a vampire movie from 2009 by Park Chan-Wook, where a priest volunteers for a disease cure program, and through a blood transfusion ends up becoming a vampire. He ends up living the family of a friend, and stuff starts to slowly unravel as thirst of different kinds enters the picture: thirst for blood, thirst for power, thirst for sex and so on.

It's great. It's a very interesting take on vampires, and implements it with a lot of interesting themes. It may be set in modern day Korea, but it's traditional vampire stuff all the way through: sexuality, religion, the seduction of power, losing one's humanity and so on. The movie's structured very interestingly, and changes focus several times during it, so it feels like you're almost getting multiple movies' worth of story. It's also very interesting in that the main character is a christian priest, so we get to see christianity as depicted through the eyes of a non-european culture. I can't really say I've seen it take this center stage in a lot of movies. The end scene is flat out fantastic. It's bloody, it's tense, it's thrilling, tragic, funny, all you really want in a movie. Great stuff.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Ghosts of Mars

The problem with this movie is describing the premise makes it sound more awesome than it really is. What if John Carpenter took Resident Evil 1, cast the babe from Species as Jill, pre hair loss Statham as Chris (and Ice Cube as Billy from 0), then moved the action to a mining colony in Mars? Also Pam Grier. But the story itself is bafflingly structured as a police report (not!Jill is getting debriefed by a committee), so it's all one big giant flashback, often a flashback within a flashback, and occasionally a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. There's even one scene that ends with a flashback to the beginning of the scene. Making things even more awkward, this movie loooooves dissolves that serve no purpose but to move a character across the screen, which creates the effect of the editor (or the viewer) impatiently skipping 15 seconds ahead.

So there's all these weird choices that service the impression that the movie/story by itself isn't terribly interesting. Then there's the "zombies", who're actually just people possessed by, you guessed it, Frank Stallone ghosts of Mars. Their thing is that if you kill one there's a chance of an Evil Dead POV camera shot travelling into your face and then tag you're it. The victim is always random, and whether this happens at all is random too. Also apparently you can just shut doors on ghosts. The whole infection/possession thing is so flimsy, it never registers tantalizingly as a threat. And whenever a character does get possessed the movie immediately forgets about them, so why is it any different from getting killed?

 

[thebobmaster]

A ★★★½ review of Weapons (2025)

“Mr. Graff, I can understand your passion and I don't mind having these conversations with you because god forbid if it was my child, I'd be demanding answers too. Those kids walked out of those homes, no one pulled them out. No one forced them. What do you see that I don't?” Written by Zach...

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[gorfias]

Watched Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. I have a pretty good theater combo going (Weapons, One Battle After Another, Frankenstein). While the sets all look very busy and very pretty I'm not convinced some of the effects are up to theater code. Which is to say, the Netflix is showing a little bit, but not nearly enough to ruin the thing.

I haven't seen the Branagh version, but this is as close to the book as adaptations have gotten, as far as I can tell. There's a few changes: Elizabeth isn't Victor's fiancee anymore, but William's, who has been aged up and essentially taken over the Henry Clerval role; by a little too much coincidence she also happens to be the niece of Victor's shady benefactor/financier, a made-up character played by Christoph Waltz. Meanwhile the specifics of the creature's rampage have been fudged so as to portray him more sympathetically, which I don't think was really necessary, anymore than we needed characters telling Victor Frankenstein "It's you - you're the real monster!".

I did enjoy it quite a lot despite the rather pointless melodramatic twists that don't go anywhere, like what's going on with the Waltz character or the tepid love quadrangle. Namely I think Elordi steals the movie. He's all kinds of great in this, and his side of the story I found very moving, even if he looks a little too much like the Prometheus alien at first.

I definitely recommend fans of the genre watch this. Fans of del Toro as well. I thought it great for about 3/4 of it but then fell apart in that last 1/4 but still worth a watch. Reminds me of a compare/contrast of HBO's "Penguin" and Disney's "Agatha All Along". Agatha couldn't commit to portraying her as a monster or as, at worst, an anti-hero. That hurt the show badly compared to Penguin, that sucked the audience in but then reminded us: He is a fricken monster. Frankenstein's monster is just that: a fricken monster. Not his fault, he is what he is and the world fears him.

Spoiler

It deviates in central ways from its source material. The monster murders Elizabeth. Cuz he's a monster. And Victor chases him out of vengeance and ends up in the Arctic. With Victor himself killing Liz, what was the motivation to end up all the way up there? You can invent something but it is not as convincing as the OG reasoning. Then the monster kills a bunch of innocent sailors. No big whoop. He feels bad about it and enjoys sunshine.

7/10.




I recall liking this a lot as a kid, but that was over 50 years ago!!!

Frankenstein: The True Story

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Bugonia, 7/10

This is the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos, here collaborating once again with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. The premise is straight out of a stoner comedy: two backwater conspiracist lunatics kidnap a high-powered female executive, thinking she's an alien intent on destroying humanity. Hilarity ensues, right? Well, wrong. The premise may be outlandish and goofy, but the movie itself is more of a thriller than anything, and quite dark, intense and graphic. It digs into a lot of contemporary issues like misinformation, echo chambers, conspiracy theories lending an escape from reality and so on. It's quite harsh, even mean-spirited, and can be a difficult watch.

Discussing what I enjoyed and didn't about this movie unfortunately is hard to discuss without spoilers, so here's the unspoiler-y stuff: the acting is phenomenal, the score is great and very unorthodox for this type of film, the atmosphere's tense, and it feels like the movie has its finger on the pulse of right here and now. Jesse Plemons is undoubtedly the showstealer here, bringing back some of that cold menace he became famous for on Breaking Bad. For most of the movie it's just three people in a house, yet it never felt slow or sluggish, there was a ramp-up in stakes in every scene. There's one particularly harrowing scene that could be straight out of a slasher movie, and one of the nasty ones to boot. Lanthimos definitely knows how to direct gnarly stuff, that's for sure.

Spoiler: Here's where we get to spoilers

Here's my theory on how this film was conceived: Lanthimos, Plemons and Stone (imagined in my head as three stoner roommates) were smoking weed and watching cartoons one night, and Plemons said to Stone: "What if you were like, an alien and I couldn't know it?" Then the three started riffing on the idea and laughing their butts off Beavis and Butthead -style, and decided on the spot to make a movie about it. They wrote down some ideas and the ending, and by the time they sobered up they realized they'd already signed contracts to make a movie. So Lanthimos got to work on the script, and in the process turned it from a bumbling stoner comedy to a dark look at the edges of modern society, but kept the original stoner comedy ending.

And that's what ultimately dragged this movie down for me. See, it turns out in the final minutes of the movie that Stone's character was in fact an Andromedan alien, and Plemons' character had caught on to her. He was right about literally everything, down to the shape of the alien spaceship. Stone's character teleports back to the mothership, and decides that humanity's had its time, and basically instakills every living human on the planet. It is such a jarring, out of nowhere ending that's so completely out of step with how grounded the rest of the film is, that right as I realized it was happening I started going: "Do I kind of hate this? I do kind of hate this don't I? Yeah, I definitely hate this." This isn't presented as a comedy or satire in the vein of Don't Look Up where this kind of thing would fit. The movie's an uncomfortably realistic, downright grueling examination of what happens when someone is no longer tethered to reality, and the damage it can cause. So when the movie decides to switch gears at such a late point, it feels like it actively undermines itself. It's like watching someone give an informative, well presented lecture about the health effects of fast food and the harm it causes, and in their closing statement chow down in a XXXL Bacon Blaster 9000. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, and made the movie feel disingenuous and half-hearted.

To my surprise this movie is actually a remake of a Korean film called Save the Green Planet from 2003. I don't know anything about it, but the poster at least would suggest a much less serious, and more whacky film than Bugonia. It just goes to show that not every director's style is suited for every movie premise.

So yeah, overall enjoyable, but definitely a mixed bag.

I was very surprised to see another movie from Lanthimos and Stone so quickly after Poor Things, and also how muted a reception it's received after the critical darling of that last film.

 

[McElroy]

Guillermo and his shiny men in ambiguous clothing.

I got a bit bored. Milk? What was up with that?? Why did he tell the captain about Herrlander's pissing habits????

 

[Bartholen]

I was very surprised to see another movie from Lanthimos and Stone so quickly after Poor Things, and also how muted a reception it's received after the critical darling of that last film.

It's very funny you should say that, since Bugonia isn't even Lanthimos' latest film with Stone and Plemons. The man's on an absolute rampage right now.