Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[Bartholen]

I agree that pt. 2 is better than pt. 1 - although I think at the time I was a minority amongst people that I know.

Kill Bill pt.1 is a sort of trashy 70s/80s B-movie except with a budget, a lot more style, and 20-30 years late. I accept the argument that trash beautifully done is still trash, and that on numerous levels it's therefore a bad movie. On the other hand, people liked those movies (like me) despite their shortcomings and there can be a lot of joy about them - in that sense, it's also a good movie that achieves very effectively what it sets out to do. One could perhaps also view it as a forerunner to the dubious Grindhouse project, which takes the same notion but more conspicuously attempts to look like a cheap, 30-year-old B-movie. And didn't do well because it was too much that type of film (which was never that popular, and still wasn't even with a top director).

The recreation aspect is something I've always heard about this movie, and I feel it's used as a crutch. Like "oh, you don't really get this movie unless you're familiar with 70s kung fu exploitation flicks". How is that supposed to be a defense? And it only makes watching the movie as someone unfamiliar with that more confusing, because there are clearly a ton of scenes the movie expects you to take completely seriously, so throwing out the "haha it's just trashy fun" excuse feels disingenuous.

 

[Ringo]

I think being familiar with the films Tarantino references weakens his work. It's really distracting, he lifts dialogue, music, and shots verbatim.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Let's have ourselves a double feature:

The French Dispatch

Wes Anderson's most recent movie. You wouldn't exactly call Wes Anderson an unpredictable director, in fact you might find such a description even comical, considering he is one of the most stylistically recognizable, and stylistically consistent, directors currently working. Nevertheless I have to admit that French Dispatch blindsided me. It's the closest Anderson's trademark dry eccentricity has ever come to outright surrealism. Even if you are well aquainted with Anderson's style, French Dispatch might overwhelm you with the quantity and purity of it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Dispatch's framing device is the history of an American newspapers small outpost in a tiny, and rather squalid, French town appropriately named "Ennui", run by its elderly chief editor played by Bill Murray, who I'm pretty sure Anderson just keeps in his basement. This framing device gives way to three of the newspapers most significant stories. One about an exceptional artist serving time for a murder in the local prison, one about a student revolt, one about a kidnapping. These three stories, in turn occasionally feature various additional indulgences. Once we see part of a stageplay. Once Anderson's already cartoony direction gives way to an animated segment. Dispatch is a movie with only a very tangential interest in narrative and a much greater one in individual, bite sized setpieces, some comedic, some dramatic, some just plain odd. A lot of them quite beautiful, actually. Anderson's characteristic blend of dry humor and sincere sentimentality keep a movie afloat that could otherwise very easily sink into its self indulgence.

A lot of the movie feels like a loving homage to Jean Pierre Jeunet, a french director who treads the same thin line between magical realism and surrealism. It utilizes very effective hodgepodge of American and European actors, Leah Seydoux, who'll always be Fragile from Death Stranding to me, posessing a very similar casual ethereal elegance as Saoirse Ronan from Anderson's previous live action outing Grand Budapest Hotel and Jeffrey Wright proving himself an excellent orator.

French Dispatch feels in a lot of ways like Anderson's Magnum Opus. It's not my favourite movie of his, that's, quite firmly, Moonrise Kingdom, but it presents Anderson at the most confident and the most sophisticated at his personal style of direction. It is definitely more of a fast moving exhibition of Andersonian aesthethics and writing. A very fast moving one, actually. It's a movie shorter than two hours but it somehow feels like a 3 hour movie, not because of how slow it is but simply because there's so much stuff in it. But it also shows a very unique director at the absolute top of his game, pulling out every trick to present what's the purest expression of himself yet.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Fucking character limit, seriously:

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Third movie in the MCU's Spiderman trilogy, starring Tom Holland as the titular character. There is a certain baseline of things to take for granted when it comes to the MCU when it comes to humor (There's too much, and a lot of it isn't funny), worldbuilding (things from other movies only come into play as long as it's convenient) and visuals (Mundane looking urban environments interrupted by opulent, but never exactly exceptional, CGI setpieces.). No Way Home has all of that and let's be honest, at this point, you aren't gonna expect anything else. But aside from that baseline, what does the movie have to offer?

Considering I don't follow pre release movie advertising and discussion, I have no clue how much of the following brief synopsis might technically count as spoilers so, heads up, I guess: Following the last movie, Spidey's secret identity is compromised. Overwhelmed by his sudden fame and related controversy, he turns to wizard Dr. Strange for help. Strange tries to cast a spell to alter everyone's memories but due to an interruption from Peter it goes wrong and somehow brings the main villains of Sam Raimi's and Marc Webb's Spiderman movies into their universe (Green Goblin from Spiderman 1, Dr. Octopus from Spiderman 2, Sandman from Spiderman 3, The Lizard from Amazing, Electro from Amazing 2). Spidey has to track down these interdimensional intruders, eventually getting help from Tobey McGuire's and Andrew Garfield's iterations of the character.
It's nothing more and nothing less than what it sounds like: the MCU showing off all the fun things it can do with two trilogies and one aborted trilogy's worth of Spiderman movies, most of them still recent enough that their respective lead actors can halfway convincingly reprise their roles. A lot of it is banking on nostalgia, which I consider myself mostly immune to. I grew up on Raimi's movies, and hold them in pretty high regard, but callbacks and revivals aren't gonna earn my good will just by being there.

That said, I liked No Way Home just fine. While it was off to a slow start that mainly iterated on the previous two movies high school comedy shtick (and felt like it would have needed the slick editing of someone like Edgar Wright to really come together), once it drops all that in favour of its Live Action Spiderverse crossover it turns into a surprisingly fun watch that serves both as a defining story for Holland's Spiderman and as a goofy but good natured epilogue to McGuire's and Garfield's series, if one that's effectively fan fiction, if you get down to it. I'm not using that term lightly, by the way: it feels exactly like crossover fanfiction, the sort of thing fans of various works put down when they start to theorize "What if?". What if all previous Spidermen and all previous villains were in a room together, how would they interact, what would they talk about? Well, No Way Home provides the closest thing to a canon answer you're gonna get. Take it or leave it.

It's hard not to compare it to Into the Spiderverse. It's not as good. Can I go into a tangent here? That was a rhetorical question, I'm gonna do it regardless:

Since about the turn of the century there has been an ever greater reliance on digital effects for action scenes and subsequently, the action in big blockbuster action movie has been owing more and more to that in (mainly japanese) animation and (mainly japanese) video games. Because of how visible this has become over the last few years, it has also become more and more obvious how limited even heavily digitally enhanced live action cinema is compared to animation. One has to look no further than to the aforementioned Spiderverse, or the recent breakout hit Arcane, to see the potential of animated action and how live action, no matter how good the CGI is, can only provide a pale imitation.

Tangent's over. Anyway, I liked No Way Home. Aside from its central hook of bringing all live action Spiderman series together, it does a pretty effective job endearing Tom Holland's already established supporting cast to us, has a few emotional moments that hit surprisingly well and, which is unusual for an MCU movie, really get to breath and sink in. It's definitely the stronger movie compared to Marvel's other outing Eternals, which projected an ambition it couldn't really back up. My passive aggressive comments about the baseline quality of the MCU aside, this does go to show that not all movies in the franchise are created equal and some work out better than others. I would call No Way Home a positive surprise. So, in conclusion: Watch French Dispatch instead.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The Power of The Dog

A movie I can't stop comparing to There Will Be Blood due to its western setting, one of the main characters being one of those "facinating" dickheads, and it also having a score by Jonny Greenwood. And unfortunately by comparison it's the significantly weaker movie.

I'd say the performances are overall okay, but nothing really outstanding. The real issue I found was that the kid and a bunch of Cumberbatch's workers personalities and ways of expressing themselves felt very modern, like, 'the 2000's era' modern. I can't really put my finger on it, but there was something about a lot of the actors that never pulled me into the setting.

The movie is too good to be forgettable, it still rings around in my head on occasion, but regardless it lacked the necessary impact.

 

[Agema]

The recreation aspect is something I've always heard about this movie, and I feel it's used as a crutch. Like "oh, you don't really get this movie unless you're familiar with 70s kung fu exploitation flicks". How is that supposed to be a defense? And it only makes watching the movie as someone unfamiliar with that more confusing, because there are clearly a ton of scenes the movie expects you to take completely seriously, so throwing out the "haha it's just trashy fun" excuse feels disingenuous.

I think you have not quite got my meaning with "trashy fun". The films are trashy, but can be fun to watch; it is not that they are fun because they are trashy.

In many respects, Kill Bill pt.1 succeeds on its own merits simply as an action movie, because the action scenes are fine. After that, Tarantino is a good director, and the film has lashings of style: I think the problem comes that the film is Tarantino indulging his idiosyncracies in a way that a lot of viewers such as yourself might struggle with. It's not so much "getting it" as if there's any requirement to be au fait with 70s kung fu and revenge flicks, but whether the viewer just happens to subjectively like it.

 

[thebobmaster]

Just watched Jack Frost, a movie about a killer snowman. If that sounds terrible to you, you're right. If it sounds like cheesy fun, you are also mostly right. However, there is one scene in the movie where the snowman rapes an 18 year old to death. That was...not pleasant to watch, and was completely unnecessary. I try not to let one scene affect a whole movie to me, but with how cheesy the rest of the movie was, it just made that scene stand out that much more and make me wonder what the editor/director of that scene was thinking.

 

[Dalisclock]

Just watched Jack Frost, a movie about a killer snowman. If that sounds terrible to you, you're right. If it sounds like cheesy fun, you are also mostly right. However, there is one scene in the movie where the snowman rapes an 18 year old to death. That was...not pleasant to watch, and was completely unnecessary. I try not to let one scene affect a whole movie to me, but with how cheesy the rest of the movie was, it just made that scene stand out that much more and make me wonder what the editor/director of that scene was thinking.

Yeah, I remember hearing about that. I'm not really sure who thought THAT scene was needed but I think they need therapy or something.

 

[thebobmaster]

Yeah, I remember hearing about that. I'm not really sure who thought THAT scene was needed but I think they need therapy or something.

From what I have gathered, the scene was supposed to be just the snowman ramming her against the wall until she died, but the editor noticed that the snowman's carrot nose happened to be missing, and told the director "You know what this looks like, right?" Cue the director having the VA for the snowman dubbing in several bad jokes.

 

[Agema]

Just watched Jack Frost, a movie about a killer snowman. If that sounds terrible to you, you're right. If it sounds like cheesy fun, you are also mostly right. However, there is one scene in the movie where the snowman rapes an 18 year old to death. That was...not pleasant to watch, and was completely unnecessary. I try not to let one scene affect a whole movie to me, but with how cheesy the rest of the movie was, it just made that scene stand out that much more and make me wonder what the editor/director of that scene was thinking.

This sort of scene was not so unusual back in the 80s (e.g. Evil Dead, Galaxy of Terror): it was considered pretty tasteless back then, albeit had a certain shock value to it. Less common in the 90s, because with the shock value fading, it was just tasteless. It's only aged even worse the last decade or two.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Swan Song: Wow / Great

In a not so distant future, Mahershala Ali plays Cameron, a terminally ill man offered the opportunity to discretely swap himself with an identical clone so his wife and child can enjoy the rest of their lives, uninterrupted, with "him."

What a mind fuck. Thankfully, this film avoids the whole "Hollywood sci-fi" take; it doesn't go out of its way to explain "how," and asks that you simply accept that it "does." Rather, it digs deeply into the ethics and emotional impact of its premise. Imagine the kind of therapy you'd experience talking to a separate, autonomous self. I mean, we each delude ourselves, rationalizing our thoughts and actions as the dialogue is internal, but imagine if that dialogue happened with your self outside of yourself, a self facing the same but wholly different repercussions from your own decisions. No self-deception, no internal validation, just you and you, walls down, facing each other. Imagine if the mirror could talk. Imagine your life in your hands without you, the conflict of loss versus greater gain as you face death and you face living.

This film hits hard without throwing a single punch. Its only shortcoming (if there's to be any) is that it doesn't dig into the spiritual aspect much at all, the idea that the "soul" might be transferable, but the rest makes up for it by appealing to the ideals of the self in a way no other film [that I've seen] really has in such a raw fashion. Highly recommended.

 

[Ezekiel]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

I can't remember if I was ever a big fan of the franchise as a kid. Was impressed by all the stunts and acrobatic fighting the turtles actors did. One even does tricks on a skateboard. I thought the suits would be clumsier. April's cute. Fun movie. If there were more comic book movies like this, I would watch more than a minimum of them.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

I can't remember if I was ever a big fan of the franchise as a kid. Was impressed by all the stunts and acrobatic fighting the turtles actors did. One even does tricks on a skateboard. I thought the suits would be clumsier. April's cute. Fun movie. If there were more comic book movies like this, I would watch more than a minimum of them.

Back when film adaptations actually cared about the source material outside of the $$$ name recognition would rake in. Not a great movie, but at least it was honest and tried. A fond part of my childhood. I recall the excitement I and my friends felt when we went to the theater to see our beloved Turtles "live." It was awesome.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Watching The Matrix Awakens tomorrow so I essentially speedrun 2 & 3 in about an hour to jog my memory of where the hell we're supposed to be by 4. What a bore these movies were. They're 60% talk talk talk and the scenes rival Star Wars prequels in acting as they do in writing. Lots of council meetings, big speeches, superfluous characters theorizing about bullshit and reprimanding each other. The other 40% are action scenes that go on for way too long and usually have no bearing on the plot. Just fighting for the sake of fighting. Neo vs Seraph. Neo vs the Smiths. The nightclub shootout. And of course that DBZ ending in Revolutions, which ends with Neo realizing he didn't have to fight at all.

 

[Bedinsis]

Towards the end though [Kill Bill vol 2] almost completely loses my sympathy, and I'm not sure how intentional it was. It's long to explain, but certain things come to light that show that we've been watching people that don't deserve any sympathy, and without whom the world would likely be a better place.

If you wish to expand on this point, I would be interested in reading it. Was it that the bride's daughter is alive and well, thereby removing the thing that afforded this multiple murderer a sympathetic backstory, or was it how she reacted upon finding this out or what was it?

My own thoughts on the Kill Bill series is that the first one is simply schlocky fun-time, elevated by Tarantino's direction, and that the second one is okay, I suppose.

 

[Dalisclock]

Muppet Christmas Carol

I haven't seen this in a couple of years but I figured it was time to show it to my 4 year old and she loved it. It feels like it holds up as well as ever and I'm not gonna lie that I feel like it's one of the best adaptations of the story I've ever seen. Apparently Michael Caine played it straight by treating it like a Royal Shakespeare production and not a bunch of Muppets in a comedy and......yeah, I can see that.

 

[Trunkage]

Back when film adaptations actually cared about the source material outside of the $$$ name recognition would rake in. Not a great movie, but at least it was honest and tried. A fond part of my childhood. I recall the excitement I and my friends felt when we went to the theater to see our beloved Turtles "live." It was awesome.

I would point out that the Turtles were three at this stage. Similar to the Mario Brothers show, it was making up 'canon' as it was going

 

[Bartholen]

If you wish to expand on this point, I would be interested in reading it. Was it that the bride's daughter is alive and well, thereby removing the thing that afforded this multiple murderer a sympathetic backstory, or was it how she reacted upon finding this out or what was it?

No.

Spoiler: I'll put this in spoilers I guess

When Bill shoots Beatrix (what was the point of censoring her name in vol. 1 by the way?) with the truth serum, she straight up admits to feeling good when killing people. Which, considering how little we know of her to begin with, dropped my sympathy for her pretty drastically. Bill is a mass murdering petulant crime lord who's clearly been grooming multiple women half his age to be his underlings and partners, and would have likely done the same to BB (minus the sexual stuff). One of his father figures is a misogynistic pimp who openly admits to cutting up the faces of women who've made him angry.

After these realizations I was left completely cold during the climax. I'm all for stories about morally grey and even villainous protagonists (I really like Killer Joe for example), but here I end up rooting for no one. It's essentially a story about morally bankrupt people in a crapsack world, but the presentation makes me think Tarantino wants me to think it's "OMG so kewl and badass". Bill's death is played up hugely with Beatrix in tears and swelling emotional music, but all I could think of was "Good. Die you fucking bastard. Why am I supposed to feel anything about your rotten ass passing? Good riddance."

 

[Ezekiel]

The Jacksons: Victory Tour in Toronto (1984)



Could have been called Michael Jackson and the Jacksons' Victory Tour. I know it was inevitable that in the height of MJ's fame most of the setlist would be his own songs, but I was hoping for a few more of the collaborative songs. Still was interesting to see them together in concert. My body got into the rhythm. MJ stole the show, for better or worse.

This is a leak or something. I downloaded the DVD VOB folder from rutracker, which is a macroblock shower barely better in terms of picture and sound than the YouTube version. The worthless Jackson estate could probably release this in much better quality.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I would point out that the Turtles were three at this stage. Similar to the Mario Brothers show, it was making up 'canon' as it was going

The Turtles were actually 6-7 years old when the first film came out. It was a comic series before it was the cartoon that made them internationally popular. My point is that the movie tried to adhere to the animated source material of the late '80s and early '90s.