Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[Johnny Novgorod]

I actually thought V was one of the better ones. Didn't really care for 2 & 3 that much.

For me Rocky works in pairs:

Rocky I & II are the same movie (underdog stands up against the establishment and proves his worth)
Rocky III & IV are the same movie (go back to your roots and fight for honor once more by avenging the death of a loved one)
Rocky V & VI are the same movie (prove you've still got it but only to a point, you have to make time for your ungrateful kid too)

On that note I'd pick 1, 4 and 6 as the best of each phase. The other movies are expendable. That Rocky wins a rematch against Apollo in 2 is missing the point of 1, and pure unrealistic wish-fulfilment. I think either 3 or 4 works for the "full of himself bourgeois Rocky" phase but 4 is more memorable for the 80s exacerbation. And out of 5 and 6, the latter one is the better movie. 5 suffers from tonal whiplash (and continuity errors), 6 handles the nostalgia way more effectively. You could end 4 with Rocky in the locker room suffering from brain trauma instead of having that open 5,, skip the fifth movie entirely and then catch up to 6 so we don't have to do endure any more pointless fights with Adrian or have Rocky reconnect with his son twice (and apparently a third time in Creed 2, but I haven't seen that one yet).

 

[Gordon_4]

The Nice Guys - 9/10

A very solid Shane Black buddy detective flick set in late the 1970s. Ryan Gosling is hilarious as frankly an alcoholic ruin of a man, and Russell Crowe is basically a rounder and cuddlier version of himself from LA Confidential. Good dialogue, nicely done action.

 

[Agema]

Saint Maud

Saint Maud is a highly effective and unsettling pychological thriller (well, horror?) about a deeply religious nurse who is struggling with faith and psychological trauma, who takes work in palliative care with the intent of saving souls rather than lives. It's grim, chilling, and a deeply uncomfortable viewing, which means it does its job superbly. There's a deep sense of suspense; whilst most of it is filmed without much special effects, it occasionally has little bursts of enhanced action employed to brutal effect. It's a great job in acting from the lead (Morfydd Clark), who is in turns naive, tough, rapturous, agonised and emotionally deadened.

 

[BrawlMan]

Finally saw Trick R Treat for the first time. God, did I miss out on a great horror film! There is no real plot line, but a bunch of stories that all happen on the same Halloween night. This is the true Halloween 4, and not those shitty sequels that came afterward. I can't say anything without spoiling it, so pop this, rent on Amazon or YouTube. I don't care! Watch it, now!

 

[Samtemdo8]

2 films

The Extended Cuts of Lord of the Rings. Two Towers is still my favorite. The Rohan Story is just so fucking good. I love the character of Theoden.

And The Shape of Water. I was way more invested in this one then other Del Toro films.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre & Texas Chainsaw 3D

I'd already seen the first movie years ago and was sort of amazed to find everything just the way I vaguely remembered it. There's barely a plot to the movie - a bunch of kids just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. There's no reason for them to be there, nor is there one for the bad guys. It's just an awful, horrible thing to happen for no good reason and the movie works because it doesn't dwell in the nature of it. It's a harrowing tour de force, and boy does the movie escalate beautifully. What I did notice this time around was how despite having the sloppy veneer of a home movie, the movie is carefully constructed. It begins with cameras piecing a horrible crime scene one flash at a time, sets up some beautiful creepy shots of totemic evil ala Exorcist, disarms you with the rawness of "home movie" footage, keeps all kinds of awful things just out of shot and ends by smash cutting to credits before we can even breathe a sigh of relief. Not to mention that booty short tracking shot.

Next is Texas Chainsaw 3D, which doesn't understand what made the original work. Leatherface is no longer a lumbering manchild who kills things in a panic but instead behaves like the Todd McFarlane pro wrestler version. The whole movie also spends an unduly amount of time setting up or explaining things, desperate to blunt out any potential for shock or macabre. Everything looks too clean, everybody's too good looking (not to mention everyone from the hitchhiker to the local deputy seems to be on an improbable Young Adult spectrum). You could barely call them "characters" in the original, but they felt and behaved realistic enough. More importantly I had no reason to hate them, unlike these assholes, who spend the majority of the time either ripping each other or cheating on each other.

 

[McElroy]

The Whistlers
Releases are thin, and I had a gift ticket about to expire... To the cinema to see a Romanian movie directed by Corneliu Porumboiu. In this film we follow a no-nonsense Romanian police investigator who also launders drug money for the mafia to the beautiful La Gomera of the Canaries in order to learn a whistling language so these criminals can't be eavesdropped on. But... most of the movie has actually happened at that point and the plot rolls on within the characters' heads as much as it does on screen. Calls are made, scheming done, and discoveries resolved without the viewer ever seeing the action but only the aftermath that follows. The structure of The Whistlers is interesting enough to make it a decent watch, but otherwise I dunno. Things play out in a mundane way, but we also see spying, surveillance and cover-ups happen all the time, so maybe they are just cautious. Catrinel Marlon as Gilda is also a sight to behold. The director really wants us to see that too. 6/10

 

[stroopwafel]

Rent-a-Pal

Best movie I've seen all year. A fantastic character study about someone who gets lost in a particular videocassette during video rendezvous dating in 1990. What a dark gem. It's a slow burn best seen without any preconceptions.

 

[BrawlMan]

Just re-watched Ghost Rider after not seeing it in a while. The movie I still like and find entertaining. I remember when my older brother took me to the Star Theater to see it in 2007. The film while not perfect, is beautifully shot and has a subtle orange and blue contrast that was not obnoxious as it became in the later 2000s and 2010s. The action scenes while short, are clear and easy to see and well filmed. It's just a fun Neo Western. I admit that I do like Spirit of Vengeance a little more, because of the action scenes, but I like both films about the same. If there is any other complaint I have about the first film, is the romance is "meh" (but not annoying), and they wasted Sam Elliot a little. How bad ass it would have been to have Dos Ghost Riders battling Blackheart at the end of the film. I get why, but even I felt blue balled at 17 when seeing him say that it was his last ride.

​

 

[BrawlMan]

I decided to watch Spirit of Vengeance immediately afterward. My feelings are the same as I saw it back in 2011. A decent movie that is fun and slightly better than the original. This film definitely has the best looking Ghost Rider! The charcoal black burning skull, the bubbling/melting leather jacket. Despite being on a lower budget the effects were amazing for what they were given. While color is slightly muted to given an burning ash type look, it is not to the obnoxious degree like Death Race or many films that tried to copy the "realistic" grim, gritty, or apocalypse to absurdity. Thankfully, there is still a lot of color, so it not overbearing or distracting. I do find it odd that they went with a soft-reboot/sorta sequel. It's implied the first film did happen, but small things are changed or rewritten. Mephisto is called Roarke now for example. This was 4 years after the original, so I kinda get it, but they should have made a sequel sooner.

SoV is basically Johnny Blaze regretting his choice to keep The Rider as he can't control it anymore and his hiding out in Eastern Europe. Specifically Turkey. While a mother (Nadya) and her son (Danny) are being hunted down, because she is the Devil's baby mama and he wants Danny to transfer his soul and get a new body. Erasing Danny from existence. Blaze, Nadya and Danny meet up and it basically becomes lite Terminator 2. Edris Elba is in it too and plays as a bad ass monk named Moreau. Sucks his character dies, but goes out like a bad ass. Give it watch; you will be entertained.

 

[Hawki]

Make sure you watch the third installment - Ghost Pony Rider

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

T2 (That's Trainspotting 2, not Terminator 2, you uncultured swine!)

Well, it's a rather interesting approach to a sequel, choosing to take on nostalgia's various ups and downs more than the characters' drug abuses this time around. It's a respectable direction for any sequel of a film already embedded in cultural consciousness with untempered fan expectations seemingly among the many nostalgic targets, playfully, mind. At points it does appear to present nostalgia as a weakness for our own demons too. All very well crafted filmage. There's also a scene quite similar to a moment in the recent Borat movie involving live music playing to prejudice, whether a homage or accidental from Sacha, it's a noticeable overlap nonetheless. I'd love more sequels to be as unafraid of their audience these days. *Cough* Straw wars *Covid-induced cough* Oopsie doodles!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Children of the Corn

A movie so boring it makes town children murdering all the adults and setting up a pagan cult look like a non-event. It's 40 minutes of Sarah Connor and some guy driving around the cornfield - not an exaggeration, they reach Gatlin by the 40 minute mark - and then another 50 minutes of them walking around. If they made a game out of it it would make for an overripe open source walking simulator.

 

[Breakdown]

1917.

The film looked amazing and there was a great sense of tension and desperation.

I did wonder if the plot made any sense though. How could it be so difficult to send orders to Benedict Cumberbatch? Surely all you would need to do would be go back from the front line, walk along for a few miles, and then walk back to the front line again.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

House 4: The Repossession

The 1st, 2nd, and 4th House movies are an attempt at family friendly horror-comedy, with varying degrees on comedy. For example, the second one has the most blatant attempts at comedy, even going so far as to have Bill Maher as a side character. The second one is also the least intentionally funny, for example, the Bill Maher side character.

That said, they're cheesy and campy and decent but bewildering B grade fun with some occasional actual scares. House 3 was a very serious and mature attempt at an actual horror movie, and you can tell from how it blatantly rips of Nightmare on Elm Street, how many times they say ***** and Fuck, and the two off screen rapes. It's very, very bad.

Watching House 4 afterwards made me believe that House 4 is worthy of multiple Oscar awards, even taking into account the strange inclusion of a Captain Planet villain for no reason.

If you can find a copy of 1, 2, and 4, I highly recommend them. They aren't good, but they're a good time

 

[Ezekiel]

Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby and Roman Polanski's Repulsion, both rewatches four years later. Surprisingly, I went from preferring Repulsion to preferring Rosemary's Baby. Just better put together horror with more involving characters and mystery. I still find Repulsion pretty good, though. Psychological horror, whereas the other is satanic (though has some psychological elements as well).

I need to check out more of his movies. Only others I watched were The Pianist and Chinatown. Oh, and The Ghost Writer, which I didn't find as good as any of the forementioned. I've got Knife in the Water on my Amazon UK wishlist.

 

[happyninja42]

And The Shape of Water. I was way more invested in this one then other Del Toro films.

Yeah that was an interesting movie. I was interested in a lot of the little tiny things that he did to flesh out his cast, like the explanation for why that one guy washed his hands before using the bathroom, but not after. It's kind of quick and easy to miss, but later on....

When he's about to start fucking his wife, and she takes his hands, and starts sniffing them, before letting out a little moan. The way she does it is kind of subtle, so you might think she's just cupping her face against her husband's hands for the tactile pleasure, but...then you remember..."oh wait...his hands intentionally smell like his dick...and she gets off on that....so that's why he doesn't wash them after. Because his wife is a little freaky and he's making sure she's got something to enjoy when he gets home." Which makes it extra grotesque later on, when his fingers are festering under the bandages, and he's still shoving his hand in her face.

That was just an interesting little detail, that for some reason just stuck with me. His wife got almost no development as a character, but that one detail, said a LOT about her.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

The Thieves - Korean movie, basically Ocean's 11, but with a huge tonal shift towards the end. Two groups of Chinese and Korean master thieves rob a casino for half a movie, then have insane gun fights and butt clenching stunts for the other half.

It wasn't bad, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but goddamn the subtitles needed work on this one. It was a very slick movie with lots twists and turns, but you could easily miss out on them due to the translations. I've been watching more Korean-made media recently (okay so like two movies), and I have to say, they make good stuff.

 

[Ringo]

Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby and Roman Polanski's Repulsion, both rewatches four years later. Surprisingly, I went from preferring Repulsion to preferring Rosemary's Baby. Just better put together horror with more involving characters and mystery. I still find Repulsion pretty good, though. Psychological horror, whereas the other is satanic (though has some psychological elements as well).

I need to check out more of his movies. Only others I watched were The Pianist and Chinatown. Oh, and The Ghost Writer, which I didn't find as good as any of the forementioned. I've got Knife in the Water on my Amazon UK wishlist.

Cul-de-sac might be my favourite, but a lot of Polanski's films are worthwhile.

Yesterday I watched The Legend of the Stardust Brothers, a silly Japanese musical from the 80's directed by Osamu Tezuka's son. It's a bit long and dumb, but the songs are catchy and it's definitely creative. It's like a pop version of Burst City.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Creed

It's about creating your own identity... by harvesting Rocky's? And making your own path... by following dad's? I don't know what these people are on about. Muddled message aside it's great to see Rocky back and the dynamic between him and Adonis is a lot of fun. Good movie and the 130 minutes whisk by in a flash but its attempts at coming up with hot takes are confusing and pretty misguided. And retroactively making it so Apollo had a child out of wedlock who then gets adopted by Apollo's widow feels like a very roundabout, contrived way to get to square one of the plot. If they'd made this movie 15 years ago then that would just be his kid.